Hunters of Light and Shadows
by Anthurak
Summary: Though our bodies may be weary, our minds uncertain, and our Hearts scattered like Roses. Nevertheless, the spirit shall always be... INDOMITABLE. And of course, there are always Monsters to be hunted...
1. Weird Thoughts Lately

She's falling.

Sinking.

Drifting down through an empty black void.

The darkness surrounds her, envelopes her…

Then, a light flickers…

Eye's open.

She's standing on a beach. Feet pressing into white sand, foamy waves just barely lapping at the tips of her shoes. And before her, the pure blue water stretches out, forever.

She knows this place. It's a beach on the south end of Patch, a place she hasn't been to in years…

Is she… Is she really…

Ruby's eyes suddenly catch sight of a figure in front of her, standing knee-deep in the water.

White hair the color of freshly fallen snow, a bolero jacket and combat skirt to match, but with an inlay of bright red. And as she turns to face Ruby, a pair of eyes the color of a bright blue sky.

_Home_.

Weiss begins to smile, and Ruby feels her face light up. A smile like she hasn't felt in a long while.

She's moving now, feet carrying her out towards her friend, her _partner_.

That's when Ruby notices the water receding. Pulling out even faster than she's moving.

The water pulls out, and rises up in a great wave looming behind Weiss.

Ruby charges forward, mouth opening as she tries to call out to Weiss, tries to warn her.

But no sound escapes her lips, and Weiss reaches out with her hand, seemingly unaware of the danger behind her.

Ruby keeps going. She's almost to Weiss…

The wave crashes down upon them.

Ruby is blinded as the water knocks her off her feet and pulls her under. Wrenching her eyes open, she tries to get her bearings as the water pulls her this way and that.

Weiss is before her, half standing, half floundering, hand still outstretched.

Ruby reaches out with her own hand, fighting against the currant.

Their hands are so close… and yet she can't seem to close the distance. As if some invisible force is pulling them apart…

_No._ Ruby feels her eyes narrow.

_Not again._

With new strength she surges forward.

Ruby's hand seizes Weiss's. She holds it in a tight grip, feeling Weiss return the grip just as hard.

And just like that, the current is gone.

They break the surface.

It's dusk now.

Ruby pulls Weiss to her feet, her partner sputtering water and shaking her now-soaked hair and clothes, looking _profoundly_ annoyed at her predicament.

Any danger now forgotten, Ruby can now only smile and giggle. Soon Weiss has joined her.

Ruby hears a voice call out to them.

Standing back at the water's edge, she sees two figures. One Black, the other Yellow.

Blake waves out to them with her right hand and Yang calls out to them with her left hand cupping around her lips.

Ruby can see why they're each only using one hand. It's because their left and right hands are joined between them…

It's a sight that brings a wide smile to Ruby's face as she waves back.

Taking Weiss's hand, Ruby helps her partner along as they charge through the surf back to the shore.

Both girls are out of breath as they reach the shore and their teammates, Ruby almost doubled over with her hands on her knees.

A familiar hand comes to rest on her head to ruffle her hair affectionately. Ruby looks up to see her sister's bright, beaming grin, along with Blake's warm, affectionate smile. And Ruby can't help but smile right back.

Home.

She was _Home._

Then the fuzzy, triangular ears on top of Blake's head twitch and the faunus looks up.

Blake points up towards the sky, and the rest of the team follows her gaze.

The sky is full of falling lights, countless glimmers falling towards the ocean below.

But then they all notice something _else_ that's falling. A shape a bit darker and far more solid looking that a point of light.

Ruby hears Weiss gasp as they all realize that the shape is a _person_.

Ruby's eyes squint, trying to get a better look at the figure. It looks familiar somehow…

That's when Ruby realizes that the figure is HER.

As if that realization triggered something, Ruby suddenly feels herself fall backwards.

She reaches out to her teammates as they reach out for her, even as it seems like they're falling backwards too.

Then Ruby's vision ripples like water, and her team is gone. Replaced with nothing but an empty evening sky all around her.

She falls.

She falls through the sky. She falls through the water. She falls through the world itself and back into the dark, empty void beyond.

Dark, save for three other points of light falling with her.

Ruby desperately reaches out for those lights, trying to _will_ herself towards them…

She falls.

They all fall.

Then…

She's laying on a beach. A beach she doesn't know.

She hears voices calling out. Voices she doesn't know.

She sees a face looking down at her. A face she doesn't know.

* * *

"_Ruby!_"

Ruby Rose's eyes snapped open, instincts flaring up as her hand immediately reached for a folded metal object leaning against the bed.

Then she remembered the just-becoming-familiar bed and saw the just-becoming-familiar ceiling, and her hand relaxed.

Ruby let out a breath that almost immediately turned into a long, drowsy yawn. Whatever switch controlled her 'danger sense' was promptly flipped back to 'Off'. Silver eyes became lidded once again as Ruby lazily sat up in bed, one hand absently scratching her fairly mushed hair as she glanced around the just-becoming-familiar room. Out of habit, she reached for where her scroll was resting on the bedside table, next to a large star-shaped lamp.

Then Ruby heard the door on the other side of the room creak, and her sleep-addled brain was reminded of the voice that woke her up in the first place.

Glancing over to the other side of the room, Ruby could see the door opening a crack, showing a bow with spiky, brown hair about two years younger than her peeking into the room.

"Mom said breakfast is getting cold." The boy spoke, looking a bit sheepish and apologetic for apparently waking Ruby up.

Ruby just smiled and nodded in response.

"Okay Sora, I'll be right down."

The boy brightened up at Ruby's response, nodding back and closing the door.

Only dimly aware of the muffled voice from the other side of the door saying she'd be down in a minute, Ruby picked up her scroll to check the time.

09:51

Ruby felt her grip tighten just a bit as she was reminded of the fact that she'd needed to set that time _manually_. Because she hadn't had a signal since…

Ruby let out a breath. Getting worked up over that wouldn't help anything.

Even so, Ruby couldn't help but turn her head to gaze out the window next to her bed.

To look outside at the just-becoming-familiar town. Down at the just-becoming-familiar beach.

And to that small, solitary island that stood just off the coast.

The island she'd washed up on almost a week ago.

_**~-~DESTINY ISLANDS~-~**_

* * *

AN: So this is something a little... different.

More to come next chapter, particularly exactly WHAT Ruby is doing on Destiny Islands...

Also, that bit at the end is my sad attempt at replicating the 'World Title Introduction' bit in text form.


	2. Any of this for Real?

"-So Wakka's got this _perfect_ shot lined up. Nobody's even close to blocking. He starts up this _huge_ kick and starts yelling out this big super-awesome attack name…" Sora waved his arms around while also trying to convey what a _huge kick_ looked like with his legs without tripping himself.

Walking alongside the younger boy down the road, Ruby smiled a knowing grin.

"And he missed the ball?" Ruby ventured.

"_And he missed the ball!"_ Sora threw his arms up in a big display while throwing his leg around to mimic the kick he was describing.

"He must have brought so much shame on his house." Ruby shook her head in a faux-grave tone. It was a well-known fact that Wakka's entire family was _obsessed _with that 'Blitzball' sport.

"So much shame." Sora echoed, mimicking Ruby's tone.

"Shame…" Ruby repeated.

"Shaaammmee…" Sora started emphasizing.

"SHAAAAMMMEEE." Ruby dialed up the hamminess, throwing her hands up in the air.

"SHAAAAAAMMM-Ack!" Sora tried to one-up Ruby with some hand throwing and jumping, only to lose his balance and fall over.

"So did Wakka fall on his butt too?" Ruby chuckled as she helped Sora to his feet.

"Oh yeah he did." Sora grinned back as the two continued on.

Ruby found herself returning the wide grin.

It was funny how quickly she'd managed to fit in around here. Ruby had been staying with Sora and his mom for almost a week now and she was already starting to feel like part of the family…

_Almost a week now…_ And just like that, Ruby felt the melancholy set in.

Almost a week since she'd gotten separated from Nora, Jaune and Ren, then dove after some random weird-looking grimm only to get swallowed up by a hole in reality.

Almost a week since she'd fallen through that endless, pitch-black void.

Almost a week since she'd woken up on a beach to three kids asking if she was okay. Washed up on a place called the Destiny Islands.

At first, things hadn't been so bad. Those kids who found Ruby on the beach, Sora and two of his friends, helped her up and gave her a ride to the mainland in their rowboat. At that moment, Ruby was mostly just disoriented. The fact that these kids apparently never heard of Anima barely registered.

But then she mentioned the word 'Grimm', and got nothing but blank, confused looks.

"_Uh… what's a Grimm?"_

_That_ was the first alarm bell.

The second warning sign came after Ruby parted ways with the kids and started talking to other locals around town, only to get _more_ blank, confused looks when she mentioned stuff like 'Anima', 'Dust', 'Grimm' or 'Huntresses'.

In desperation, and partly to stop giving off the appearance of some rambling crazy person, she'd sought out the local Library, hoping to gain some kind of clarification on just _what was going on!_

But the library was no help either. So many pivotal parts of the history and culture that Ruby knew, the four kingdoms, the faunus, dust, hunters and Grimm… _None_ of it showed up in _any_ of the books she read here.

And then… and then night finally fell.

Ruby could still vividly remember the end of first day after she'd woken up here, walking out of the library when it closed after dark, desperately trying to reconcile all this information she'd learned that didn't make any sense…

Only to look up to see a _moon that wasn't broken_. A moon that was _whole_.

That was the moment when it well and truly sunk in for Ruby.

_This wasn't her world_.

In the present, Ruby paused to steady herself as she remember that night.

In all honesty she'd taken that revelation… about as well as could be expected.

* * *

_What do I do?_

Ruby sat on the beach, knees up to her chest, red hood pulled up, red cape wrapped around herself like a blanket, and Crescent Rose held tight to her chest. An empty, silver gaze looked out across the still waters, dried tracks running down her face.

It'd been about five hours by her reckoning since she'd left the library. About five hours since she'd first looked up at the moon.

About five hours since she'd found out _EVERYTHING WAS WRONG._

The first two hours Ruby spent crying. The next hour she'd spent screaming. After that she'd simply raged through the nearby forest for a while. There were probably a good few dozen palm trees that had fallen to Crescent Rose's blade.

And the last hour or so, Ruby was here. Staring out at that dark, empty horizon.

She'd cried herself dry, screamed herself horse and raged until her legs could no longer carry her.

Now… now Ruby was just numb.

_What can I do?_

She was on _another WORLD_.

Separated. Cut off from everything she knew. From every_one_ she knew…

And with no way home…

Ruby felt herself pull her cloak tighter around herself, felt herself hold Crescent Rose closer to her chest like she was the only friend Ruby had left in the world.

Because that's exactly what she was…

Ruby let out a weak, choked sob.

A sudden gust of sea air pulled her hood down off her head.

With a scowl, Ruby reached her arm out to pull her hood back up. Why couldn't this world just let her brood and be _safe_ dammit!

But as she reached back, Ruby found her eyes drawn to the night sky above.

Thankfully that stupid _Wrong not-broken Moon_ was nowhere in sight. Instead, all Ruby saw were countless points of tiny lights across the sky.

Somehow… somehow that sight gave Ruby a bit of comfort, if only a tiny bit.

At least the stars were the same…

Ruby's thoughts stopped, froze as she noticed four stars arrayed together.

Suddenly, Ruby was back, alone in that pitch black void… But that was just the thing wasn't it?

_She hadn't been alone!_

There'd been three other points of light falling with her! White, Black and Yellow.

_WEISS, BLAKE and YANG!_

Ruby _knew_ those _had_ to be them! She could _feel it!_

Somehow, her teammates had fallen into that void as well. And that meant…

Ruby shot up, her breath catching.

_They might be on this world too._

Ruby felt herself choke as new tears began to well up in her eyes. But these weren't tears of despair…

_She wasn't alone…_

But just then, a new thought suddenly sprung forth.

If Weiss, Blake and Yang were here too… then that meant they were probably just as lost as Ruby was… just as isolated… just as _alone…_

Ruby's hands clenched into fist and her eyes narrowed.

All of a sudden, Ruby wasn't some lone huntress out on her own. She was a _Leader_. A Leader whose _Team_ was somewhere out there, possibly in danger. A Leader whose first responsibility was to her Team, her _family_.

In that moment, Ruby knew _EXACTLY_ what she needed to do.

Ruby looked up, raising her hand as if to touch that four-star array.

_Yang… Blake…_

_Weiss…_

_I'll find you._

_I PROMISE._

* * *

"So uh, have you found anything yet?" Ruby was jolted from her thoughts, looking to the boy she was walking with.

"You know, the stuff you're looking for in all those books?" Sora said before looking away a bit sheepishly at the awkward question.

But Ruby just shrugged.

"Well, nothing concrete yet, but I'm still hopeful!" She flashed Sora a bright smile which instantly perked him back up.

"Yeah! I know you'll find what you're looking for!" He gave Ruby a big smile of his own and a thumbs-up of confidence.

For her part, Ruby only felt her smile break the tiniest bit.

True, her confidence wasn't… _entirely_ a front, but…

"Come on!" Sora suddenly shouted, "Riku and Kairi are waiting for us!" With that he began to run off ahead down the hill towards the beach.

Ruby let out a sigh, allowing her smile to drop now that the younger boy was running ahead.

It wasn't like she was at least still _hopeful…_ but it was becoming clear she was running out of resources.

Over the last week, Ruby had scoured the local libraries and asked as many questions around town as she could without seeming like some crazy person, trying to find as much information about this new, unfamiliar world as possible.

But while Ruby was finding no end of history, culture and stories big and small, almost none of it was relevant to her personal quest. Almost nothing about people from other worlds, and definitely nothing recent. None of it was leading her to potentially finding her team.

It was time she thought about leaving…

"Hey Ruby! Come on!" came a distant shout from Sora, jolting Ruby from her thoughts to look ahead down the hill. It looked like Sora had managed to get quite the lead on her. He'd already made it to the end of the road and was running down the beach to where two other kids, a girl with red hair and another boy with silver hair, were getting a rowboat ready.

Ruby's sharp eyes also caught that Sora was coming to a stop and starting to turn his head around to face back towards her. The other boy getting the rowboat ready was focused on Sora and was only starting to look up to where she was. The girl was doing the same.

Ruby felt her lips curl slightly into a mischievous grin. That all put a pretty ideal blind-spot about half a meter to Sora's right and just behind him.

Her grin widening, Ruby focused her awareness to that singular point, focused a bit of her energy into that oh-so familiar part of her spirit and focused her thoughts on an image of falling rose petals.

She pushed off the ground and into the ether…

"Hey Ruby-!" Sora called out again as he turned only to see that Ruby wasn't back where he left-

"Present." Came a cheery voice from _right behind him_ where _nobody was supposed to be!_

"GAAH!" Sora yelped out as he tried to jump away and spin around to face the voice at the same time, and wound up falling flat on his rear. Groaning a bit, Sora rubbed his behind, looking up to see Ruby looking down at him with a wide, _totally innocent_ smile.

"How do you keep _doing that?"_ Sora grumbled.

"Doing what?" Ruby tilted her head quizzically.

"_That!"_ Sora gestured wildly at Ruby before looking over to the others, "You guys saw that, right?"

Ruby looked over to the other two kids. Kairi was giggling at Sora's antics, and Riku was leaning against the boat in the kind of 'cool' pose that was _definitely_ trying to cover up the fact that he'd jumped just as much as Sora did at Ruby's surprise appearance.

"Man Sora, you really need to watch your back more." Riku shot Sora a cocky look.

"What? You saw what Ruby did?" Sora sent an indignant scowl back at Riku.

"Well yeah, obviously." Riku crossed his arms as the grin on his face only got bigger.

For her part, Ruby raised an eyebrow at Riku's teasing. Well, it was only _fair…_

"He's right you know." Ruby raised a finger in her best imitation of Uncle Qrow's 'teaching mode', "After all…"

She glanced to Riku, who was still giving Sora a cocky smirk. More precisely, Ruby glanced to a space directly behind Riku…

"_You never know when an enemy might get you from behind."_

"EEP!" now it was Riku's turn to yelp in terror. Or squeak, in his case.

* * *

AN: For reference, Yes, Ruby did get yanked off of Remnant while she was traveling with JNR during Vol 4.

This also means Ruby is 17 while Sora and co. are all 14, and I gotta say, writing Ruby as the older teenage hanging out with a bunch of kids is certainly a novel experience.

Same with writing angsty!Ruby.


	3. Real or Not?

"AAHHH!" Sora yelled out a battlecry.

"AAHHH!" Riku yelled out a battlecry in response.

"Aahhh…" Ruby yawned, lounging on her perch atop a large, bent-over palm tree watching the two boys play-fight with a pair of wooden swords. Sitting a bit further down the natural-occurring bench, Kairi giggled.

The four of them were all gathered on a small spit of rocky land that sprouted out of the water just a stone's throw from the beach, connected to the island proper by a short rope bridge. Ruby had to admit, the location practically screamed 'Fighting Arena', complete with a ring-out hazard in the form of a three meter drop into the water.

Of course, watching a couple of 14-year-olds awkwardly smack each other with slightly oversized sticks wasn't exactly… riveting as fights go.

Turning her head slightly, Ruby glanced over to the large beach on the island proper where the _other_ trio of kids who liked to come out to this island were hanging out.

Tidus; the mildly-spiky brown-haired boy who was basically Sora's backup bestie when Riku was busy, Wakka; the boy with a _single_ spike of orange hair who's interests seemed to consist of 'Blitzball' and _literally nothing else_, and Selphie; a curly-brown-haired girl who was apparently who Kairi hung out with when she wasn't spending time with Sora and Riku. Currently, Tidus seemed to be teasing Wakka over the epic failure of a kick Sora mentioned earlier while Selphie looked like she wanted to ditch the two boys and join Sora's group on the 'Fight Rock'.

A sudden yelp from Sora and some small giggles from Kairi brought Ruby's attention back to the fight. It was pretty much a given at this point that while Sora and Riku were nowhere near professional fighters, Riku's slightly bigger frame gave him _just_ enough of an edge to beat Sora two times out of three.

In fact, Ruby had been spending quite a bit of time hanging out with Sora and his friends over the last few days, mostly when they all came out to this island. Most of the time was spent goofing off with a variety of games like races or tag (which Ruby only _sometimes_ utterly schooled these youngsters at), working on Sora's, Riku's and Kairi's super-secret-don't-tell-anyone raft project, or these mock playfights. Sora and Riku in particular tended to get rather… _engrossed_ in the last one.

Ruby could appreciate that. Honestly, she'd been feeling just a bit antsy these past few days with no one to spar with.

Surprisingly, the kids' respective parents had all been pretty supportive on this arrangement, to the point of even _paying_ Ruby for her impromptu babysitting. As Sora's mother Dawn had privately mentioned to Ruby, they were all 'very grateful to have a responsible young woman like you to keep an eye on their kids'.

Ruby thought it was _probably_ a good thing that she hadn't mentioned the whole 'I'm a professional Monster Hunter with a habit of pretty liberal rule-bending and a tendency to play life-or-death situations by ear because you don't really have time to come up with the most intricate of plans when a five-meter-tall, shadow-rage-monster is trying to claw your face off' bit to Dawn or the other parents.

Of course, it wasn't like Ruby had brought up her job around Sora and his friends either.

Oh, she'd thought about it a few times. About _wowing_ these kids with the adventures of Team RWBY and epic tales of Grimm-slaying and thwarting bad guys!

But… then that would mean Ruby would have to explain exactly what the _Grimm_ were. That was the thing, here on the Islands. To these kids, Monsters only existed in stories, in books or movies or scary stories told by parents before bed.

Where Ruby came from, the Monsters were _real_. And there were plenty of things about hunting Monsters that _didn't_ end up in the stories…

Ruby remembered her time at Signal Academy, and how by the time she'd left for Beacon, over a third of her classmates had _washed out_. Mostly after the first Live-Fire Training Exercise mid-way through second year - the time when the teachers and a few professional hunters took the class on a weekend fieldtrip outside the kingdom. For their first _Grimm Hunt._

For Ruby, the trip wasn't too bad. She'd killed her first Grimm about a year earlier when Dad and Uncle Qrow took her and Yang out on their own family training exercise. Ruby knew full well what she was in for.

However, for most of Ruby's classmates, this was their first time even _seeing_ a Grimm up close. The teachers prepared them as best they could, made sure the students were only facing the lowest-tier Grimm, and watched over them carefully with a full team of professional huntresses and huntsmen as backup.

But there's only so much you can be prepared for literally staring death in the face.

To this day, Ruby could still remember seeing a girl in her class, Valerie, frozen stiff, eyes wide, shaking in uncontrollable terror as a minor Beowulf charged her. Ruby took down the Grimm before it got anywhere near Val, but that hadn't really helped her. Valerie ended up having to be sedated and flown back to Vale.

Val's case wasn't a unique one either. Over half of Ruby's classmates froze up the first time they faced a Grimm during that trip. Most managed to shake it off, but more than a few ended up like Valerie. And then there were those handful of kids who needed to be medivac'ed…

Sure, nobody actually _died_ or were even critically injured, but within a few days after returning from the trip, the class shrunk by nearly a third. And after she left for Beacon, Ruby knew it would most likely shrink even further.

The fact was, being a Huntress was hard, intense and _dangerous_, and not many were truly cut out for it.

How was Ruby supposed to talk about _that_ to kids who only knew monsters from books and movies? How could she describe a life and a world where all that was _real?_

A life where every fight might be your last. A life where every time you left on a mission… you might not come home…

And how sometimes the Monsters didn't wear shadowy fur, scales or claws. Sometimes they were _people_ too…

And how sometimes… sometimes the monsters _won…_

It was all just one big hole that Ruby didn't want to take these kids down. Maybe because _she_ didn't want to take a trip down there either…

"_Do you believe in Destiny…"_

"Gah!"

Ruby snapped out of her thoughts, eyes narrowing, heart-rate rising and her hand _almost_ going for Crescent Rose before noticing the childish grumbling and light-hearted giggling.

"Heh, is that all you go-OW!" Riku tried to lay in some taunting, only to earn a jab to the ribs from Sora.

"Yea-hah! How do you like tha-GAH!" Sora tried to milk his brief victory, only to get a smack on the head in retaliation.

Ruby felt herself relax, thankfully it seemed like none of the kids noticed. Instead, Sora and Riku were still awkwardly dancing around each other while Kairi alternated between cheering one of them on and giggling at their antics from her perch next to Ruby.

Ruby noticed that it looked like the other red-head had subtly scooted herself a bit closer while she herself had been in thought…

Amazingly enough, Ruby _wasn't_ the first person from a whole other world to wash up on the shores of Destiny Islands. It turned out that Kairi also washed up on the beach several years ago too and had been living here ever since.

And naturally, Ruby _immediately_ went to her for information as soon as she found out about that, eager to find out _something_ from someone who might also be from Remnant.

Unfortunately, Kairi couldn't remember much of anything from her old home, and hers and Ruby's attempts to compare notes hadn't yielded a whole lot, and not nearly enough to confirm that the two of them might come from the same place.

Kairi could remember a few things that were familiar to Ruby. Her home was this great city, there were warriors who protected the city, and she had some vague recollection of some shadow-like creatures that _might_ be Grimm.

But at the same time, terms like Huntresses, Huntsman, Dust and Grimm were completely foreign to Kairi. She knew the first two terms in a general sense, but clearly not in the context Ruby knew them, and _Dust_ and _Grimm_ were terms that went clean over her head.

Though even if Ruby hadn't gotten much useful information, she couldn't deny that she'd had a lot of fun hanging out with Kairi for an afternoon, chatting about various topics once they'd run out of backstory notes to compare. Kairi in particular seemed _fascinated_ by anything Ruby could tell her about Remnant, even if Ruby stayed pretty vague on _what_ exactly she did for a living.

A light pressure brushing up against the foot Ruby had resting on the trunk itself grabbed her attention, causing a small smile to spread on her lips.

It seemed Kairi had managed to scoot herself all the way over to the point where she was almost sitting on Ruby's foot.

"Something you wanted to talk about, Kairi?"

"Wh-What? Uh… No. _No_. Not really," Kairi started to stutter awkwardly before noticing she was almost sitting on Ruby's foot, "_Oh!_ I, uh, I'msorry!" she stuttered _very_ awkwardly as she scooted away a bit. It looked like her face was starting to turn a little red…

"_Sorry."_ She squeaked out, her eyes meeting Ruby's for only a brief moment before looking away.

Yep. Her face was _definitely_ getting red.

Ruby's wondering of how exactly she was going to handle _that_ was cut off as both girls heard a loud "Ouch!" from Sora.

Apparently, the boy had managed to get Riku to hit one of the trees with a missed strike, only for a coconut to fall off the tree and bean Sora on the shoulder.

Riku was still laughing when Sora proceeded to retaliate by picking up the coconut and throwing it at the taller boy.

"Boys…" Kairi rolled her eyes in some good-natured exasperation at Sora's and Riku's antics, having recovered her composure.

"Eh," Ruby shrugged, content to let that previous bit of awkwardness drop, "their technique's pretty decent for kids with no training."

"Huh?" Kairi gave Ruby a confused look. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Sora's swinging pretty wild and he doesn't have much focus, but he's got good mobility and he's been picking some good openings," Ruby explained, easily slipping into the lessons Uncle Qrow drilled into her brain from an early age, plus her experience at Beacon. "And Riku's got pretty good poise and a sense for counters, but he's a bit too cocky, and I think he's got a bit of a tunnel-vision problem." Honestly, Sora reminded Ruby of herself just a bit back when she'd first started trying out swords.

"To be honest, those two just need a decent teacher and they could be pretty good…" Ruby trailed off as she turned to the suddenly quiet girl next to her.

Kairi was suddenly giving Ruby a look of growing wide-eyed _awe_.

"You're a _warrior?_"

And in that moment, Ruby was reminded of a young girl looking up at a stern Beacon Huntress who'd just saved her from some jerk in a tacky suit with a cane chucking Dust Crystals and far more importantly had looked _so freakn' COOL doing it!_

Ruby knew she'd wanted to hold off on talking about the whole Monster-Hunting business with these kids. But even so…

Ruby flashed Kairi a wide grin as she patted the folded-up Sniper-Scythe hanging from her waist.

"I'm a _Huntress._"

Somehow, Ruby hadn't expected just how _GOOD_ it was going to feel to say that…

Kairi meanwhile looked to be positively _vibrating_ in giddiness and sparkly-eyed wonder. The younger redhead might not normally be as openly talkative about it, but Kairi _loved_ stories about Heroes and Warriors and Monsters. Maybe even more than Sora and Riku.

And now she'd just found out that the cool, mysterious new girl from another world she befriended was an _actual Monster Slayer!_

Kairi was about three seconds from a full-blown giddy squee when both her and Ruby found their attention grabbed by a desperate "Whoa-Whoa-WHOA-WHOA!"

The girls looked to the sound just in time to see Sora take a tumble over the edge of the plateau into the water, next to a Riku who may-or-may-not have pushed him…

"Oh… n-" Kairi was only just registering what just happened when she felt a soft gust of wind, and noticed that Ruby was no longer sitting next to her… and was now perched on an _entirely different_ tree overlooking the edge Sora just went over.

"You okay, Sora?!" Ruby called down. The boy _looked_ like he was fine, though Ruby found herself doing some quick mental calculations of how well she could probably swim pulling him and how far away the shallows were… just in case.

For his part, Sora was merely _incredibly_ miffed as he swam over to the ladder that led up the plateau. Getting up the ladder while also holding his sword was tricky, but at the moment Sora was far too focused on grumbling about how much of a no-good dirty cheater Riku was and how there was _no way_ he could be winning five-times-in-a-row without cheating and why was his left hand not grasping the ladder right now?

Sora had a brief moment of realization that he probably should have been more attentive when climbing with one hand before he found himself falling off the ladder and back down in the water.

At least until a small, yet very firm hand seized his wrist.

"Gotcha!" Ruby flashed a wide smile as she hoisted Sora, or more accurately, _threw_ _him_ back up onto the island, leaving the boy sitting on his rear wondering what exactly just happened.

"Wow Sora, first gravity and now _ladders?_" Riku suddenly spoke up, arms crossed with a _supremely_ smug grin, "Maybe you should try beating _those_ before taking me on again."

Sora stewed, crossing his own arms and sending his best glare at his rival.

"I mean, do you _really_ think Kairi's gonna want to hang out with a klutz who can't even climb a _ladder_ right?" Riku continued his ribbing, "Maybe me and Kairi should split that Papou…"

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" came an indignant question from Kairi.

Sora just steamed from his spot. He was just about to leap to his feet and challenge Riku to another go when another hand suddenly reached down to him.

"Hey Sora, mind if I tag in?"

Everyone went quiet.

Sora looked up to see Ruby leaning down, offering a hand towards Sora's wooden sword, along with a rather mischievous smile.

"Uh… okay…" with absolutely _no idea_ what was going on, Sora handed his wooden sword to Ruby before standing up himself. Honestly, Sora didn't know _what_ to make of what was happening. Sure, Ruby was older and bigger than him and Riku, and she was _somehow_ freakishly fast sometimes, but she wasn't a _fighter_… was she?

It suddenly occurred to Sora just how _little_ he actually knew about his new friend…

On the other side of the impromptu arena, Riku had gone from 'cocky' to… something that definitely _wasn't_.

Kairi meanwhile was now watching Ruby with positively _rapt_ anticipation.

As Sora made his way over to the bent-over tree to join Kairi, Ruby casually strutted out into the arena, giving her new weapon a few experimental swings.

Honestly, Ruby wasn't all that sure why she was doing this.

Maybe it was to curb Riku's cocky-streak just a bit.

Maybe it was to give Sora a few pointers.

Or it might just be that part of Ruby was still thinking about that look of wide-eyed awe that Kairi gave her and wanted to show off. Just a _little_ bit.

Ruby gave the wooden sword a few more experimental swings and found that, surprise surprise, it was in fact just a couple pieces of wood tied together. For just a fleeting moment, Ruby found herself back at 12 years old when Uncle Qrow first took her under his wing. Back then, Ruby had just figured out that a Scythe was _THE_ weapon for her, but Uncle Qrow made sure she still got in some regular practice with a standard sword. As her Uncle put it, 'swords are literally everywhere, so you might as well know how to use one'.

Ever since then, Ruby made sure to keep up at least _some_ practice with various types of swords, between the basic training versions at Signal, to Team RWBY's occasional 'Weapon-trading' training sessions where she'd gotten to practice with Weiss's Myrstanester or Blake's Gambol Shroud. To this day, Ruby would be comfortable in saying that while _no_ weapon would _ever_ replace Crescent Rose, she was at least fairly capable with shortswords and longswords.

After her quick test-swings Ruby would say the sword in her hand was comparable to a shortsword, though admittedly to Sora's and Riku's smaller frames, it might be more of a longsword to them.

As she took a position on one side of the ad-hoc fighting ring, Ruby looked over to her opponent… who still hadn't moved.

Any semblance of Riku's normal cocky swagger was very much _gone_, leaving the boy fidgeting awkwardly in place as he watched Ruby. As if he was still… _processing_ what was happening. From what she'd seen of Riku, Ruby got the impression the boy was the kind who was really used to being the top fighter in his little friend group, and likely never really fought someone totally _new_ before.

"Hey Riku! We doing this or what?" Ruby called over to her apparently stalled-out opponent, absently tossing her weapon between her hands and flipping it around in a casual flourish. Internally though, Ruby was starting to wonder if maybe she was taking this a bit too far. After all, here she was, challenging a kid over three years her junior with no proper training to a fight. It was entirely possible Riku was just freaked out…

"But… you're a _girl_…" Riku finally spoke up.

Ah.

Ruby raised an eyebrow, and even at the edge of her peripheral vision, she could tell Kairi was shooting Riku a _withering_ glare.

Time to give this kid a reality check.

Taking a page out of Weiss's book, Ruby flipped her sword up into a thrusting stance…

Riku blinked at this odd stance.

…and immediately found Ruby's sword poking him between the eyes, its wielder now _right_ in front of him.

"You know, it's a _really_ dumb idea to just _let_ your opponent take the first move like that." Ruby dropped into her best impression of Uncle Qrow's trademark drawl.

Riku immediately let out a surprisingly high-pitched yelp, jumping back away from Ruby, arms flailing frantically.

To his credit, Riku _did_ manage to knock Ruby's sword away from him in the midst of his panicked flailing, though Ruby could hardly tell if that was thanks to skill or luck on his part.

"Yo- I… Wha-" Riku stammered after nearly falling on his rear, giving Ruby a look that was one part disbelief, one part petulant anger, and just a hint of abject terror.

Ruby simply moved her sword aside, tapping it casually on her shoulder as she raised her free right hand.

"You wanna' try that again?" Ruby curled two fingers in a beckoning gesture, eyebrow raised and lips curled in a mischievous, knowing look.

Riku was still stammering, still staring in disbelief. Perhaps without realizing it, he took an intimidated step back. Maybe it was time to offer him an out…

"You know you can back out if this is too much…" Ruby offered, expression shifting to a more sympathetic one. She'd just given Riku a stark preview of what he was up against. Best to give the kid one last chance to back out. Ruby did her best to come off as caring and non-judgmental, mimicking the tone Yang used with her back when they first started sparring together.

However, it seemed Ruby's words had the opposite affect…

"NO!" Riku blurted out, his face clearly turning red in indignation, "I'm not gonna lose!"

With that, the silver-haired boy uncharacteristically gripped his sword with both hands and charged Ruby, letting out a battle-cry.

_Alright then,_ Ruby shrugged.

Let the lessons begin.

Riku was holding his sword high over his head as he charged Ruby, bringing the blade down as he reached her…

…and hit nothing but air as Ruby casually stepped aside to the right.

"Okay, lesson one," Ruby spoke up towards Sora and Kairi even as Riku went past her, "_don't_ use overhead strikes when you're charging. They're _super_ easy to read. And when you miss…"

Ruby proceeded to smack Riku on the back of the neck with her own sword, knocking the already overextended boy completely off balance and causing his momentum to send him tumbling.

"…you are _super_ off-balance and _super_ open to counters."

Riku managed an impressive two full somersaults before coming to a halt. The boy shook like a wet dog trying to clear his head as he got to his feet.

"Hey Riku! FYI," Ruby called over, getting Riku's attention, "I just took your head off." Ruby flashed a mischievous grin. This in turn seemed to only incite Riku further, the boy attempting to make what seemed to be an intimidating growl before charging Ruby again.

To his credit, Riku _wasn't_ using the overhead strike again, instead keeping his sword low and pointed forward in preparation for a thrusting attack.

Ruby responded by swapping her sword into her right hand and assuming the more standard stance she'd picked up from Uncle Qrow. As Riku reached her, Ruby knocked the incoming thrust aside to her right even as she took a step to the left out of Riku's way, smacking the boy's upper arm with her blade as he went past.

"Whelp, that's your arm gone now." Ruby quipped once again.

Riku replied with the indignant battle cry of the frustrated pre-teen and came at Ruby once again, slashing wildly all the way.

For her part, Ruby simply gave a small smile of comfort as she felt the familiar rush of combat flow through her, ducking and weaving around most of the slashes and knocking the rest aside with her blade.

She'd _really_ been getting antsy these past few days with no action.

Even if the 'action' was pretty much a mild warmup for her.

While Riku clearly had a decent grasp of the basics, it was equally clear that he'd never been introduced to more advanced concepts of combat.

The silver-haired boy raised his sword to block what he _thought_ was an incoming blow to his head, only to suffer a painful jab to the stomach when Ruby went low instead.

Feinting, for instance.

He certainly had some talent. Ruby would say Riku was _almost_ as good as Jaune was back in their early days at Beacon. But whereas Jaune had both a shield to tank hits and the good sense to play defensively and set up counters, Riku was much more aggressive, constantly going in for hits and leaving himself open for counters.

Speaking of which, Ruby ducked under a wide swing of Riku's, smacking his upper right leg.

"Oh no! She took your leg Riku!" Kairi heckled from the impromptu stands.

"Again!" Sora added. Friends or not, Sora was clearly getting a kick out seeing the boy who usually smacked _him_ around in these fights getting taken down a few pegs.

Of course, all this served to just frustrate Riku even more before he lashed out at Ruby again. Funny enough, Ruby noticed that Riku was actually fighting a lot more like Sora usually did right now, rather than the more defensive stance he usually employed. Which ironically was only making things _harder_ for the silver-haired boy. If he was using the more passive, defensive-focused stance, he'd be better positioned to block Ruby's attacks and might even be able to set up a counter or two. Instead, Riku was going full offensive at the moment, effectively trying to outrun and outmaneuver Ruby.

Which was going about as well as could be expected.

Emulating one of Weiss's more stylish flourishes, Ruby spun out of the way of another overhead strike and bonked Riku on the head.

"There goes your head again!" Ruby chirped.

"That's the third one!" Kairi added.

Though to his credit, it seemed Riku _was_ learning to keep up the momentum of a combo.

Suddenly gripping his sword with both hands, Riku swung hard back around, and was rewarded with Ruby's sword _finally_ being knocked aside. The silver-haired boy, feeling a sense of supreme vindication, flashed a cocky grin to his opponent.

Ruby simply smirked.

Then she punched him in the face.

It wasn't a _hard_ punch by any estimation, and Ruby deliberately aimed high so the blow mostly just bounced off Riku's brow and forehead without doing any actual damage.

However, it seemed that the damage Ruby did to Riku's _pride_ was nothing less than _devastating_. Apparently enough to send him falling onto his rear.

"Wha-What was _that?!_" Riku half yelled, half stammered, even as Sora and Kairi burst into laughter.

"Always remember," Ruby wagged a finger, "there're always more weapons than just the ones in your hand." Admittedly, Ruby knew that statement was pretty rich coming from a huntress who'd put _all_ of her training time into weapons practice and defiantly _avoided_ hand-to-hand training until _very_ recently.

But these kids didn't know that.

For his part, Riku was practically _steaming_, grumbling to himself as the boy seemed to have reached _maximum_ indignation, _"…I'll show you more weapons… than… hands!"_

"Huh?" Ruby raised an eyebrow, trying to parse out what exactly _that_ metaphor was supposed to mean. Then Riku acted.

In an impressive bit of acrobatics, from his sitting position on the ground Riku flipped back onto his hands, coiling his body up into a ball, legs folded up against himself…

Ah.

Then in a quite frankly _very_ impressive bit of upper-body strength, Riku uncoiled himself like a spring, _launching_ himself off the ground and straight at Ruby.

Or at least, straight at where Ruby _was_.

The world seemed to slow down for Riku as Ruby stepped out of his way with almost casual ease, giving a cheerful smile, a friendly wave and a bonk on the head to Riku as he flew clean past her…

…and right over the edge of the plateau.

"So! You _really_ want to pay attention to the terrain at all times." Ruby turned to Sora and Kairi as a loud SPLASH could be heard over the edge. "Also…" Ruby looked over the route Riku had just taken with that maneuver, "don't ever do that. Like, _ever_."

Ruby turned back to her audience, a little unsure of how to wrap this up, "So uh… any questions?"

Sora looked to be some combination of flabbergasted and awestruck at what he'd just watched, while Kairi looked to be just about vibrating herself off the branch in giddy wonder.

"…Guess not," Ruby shrugged, "You okay down there Riku?" she glanced over the edge.

Sitting in the shallows, arms crossed in a positively _epic_ sulk, Riku raised a hand in reply.

"_Dang,_ should I be telling your _mom_ you do that?" Ruby raised both eyebrows at _that_ gesture.

Riku instantly dropped the hand.

"Didn't think so."

* * *

AN:

I gotta say, writing Ruby in this sort of context really makes me appreciate how surprisingly _unique_ she is as a character.

Like on the one hand, she's still definitely a kid, an older kid with some maturity, but still a _kid_. She's got her bubbly enthusiasm, tendency to goof around and wanting to do cool stuff to impress her new friends.

But at the same time, at this point in the story Ruby is basically a hardened war veteran who's seen some pretty messed up shit. She's fought through multiple battles, seen villages and cities attacked and even had to watch several people _die_, including two of her closest friends. And even before the Fall of Beacon, it's not like Ruby was naïve to dangers she was facing. Ruby saw firsthand at a very young age just how _dangerous_ being a huntress is, and I imagine she knew full well what she was getting into.

Now in the show, this dissonance doesn't really crop up that much, mostly because all of Ruby's family and friends are pretty much in the same boat. They've seen all the bad stuff Ruby has, they've all lost friends and family too. Everyone has the same frame of reference.

But then what happens when you take Ruby entirely _out_ of that life and drop her into a group of people who _don't_ have that same frame of reference? Drop her into a world where humanity _isn't_ constantly threatened by monsters? I don't think this gets discussed much, but Ruby and the rest of the huntresses and huntsmen are essentially _soldiers_, even if they aren't part of a standard military.

All in all, it's going to be _very_ interesting what Ruby and the rest of her team are going to bring to the narrative table once the Heartless show up.

Also, No I am not intentionally bashing on Riku. It's easy to forget after half a dozen games worth of character development, but Riku in KH1 was a pretty cocky little brat even before he took the Deal with the Xehanort. Plus he needs _something_ to get him fixated on Ruby as a rival for this story, and I figured Ruby should get to show off at least once before all the darkness hits the fan.


	4. Lining the Pieces

It seemed the day passed in the blink of an eye. Between a few impromptu lessons from Ruby to Sora and Kairi, a bit more work on that secret raft project and a fair bit of general goofing around, much of the day seemed to go by in a flash.

Now the sun was going down, casting the small spit of land in gold and orange hues. Ocean waves flickered and glimmered, reflecting the light in various directions as they washed against the shore. Standing on the white sands of the beach, one could watch the sunset with a completely unbroken view of the horizon. Ocean as far as the eye could see, without even a glimpse of the mainland.

Tidus, Wakka and Selphie had left a little while ago in their boat, Riku was still off sulking somewhere and Ruby found herself back on that bent-over tree out on the plateau with Sora and Kairi watching the sunset together.

Well, _Ruby_ was watching the sunset. Sora and Kairi were still taking turns poking at Ruby for information concerning her whole 'I'm actually a badass warrior' surprise reveal from earlier.

"Is that your weapon?"

"When did you start?"

"Is everyone where you're from a hunter?"

"Did you go to school for it?"

"What's the biggest monster you've ever killed?"

The pair's enthusiasm and hunger for answers seemed to be reaching a boiling point. Sora had managed to grab the spot on the tree right next to where Ruby was perched, and Kairi looked to be about ready to either clamber over her friend to get to Ruby, or just shove him off the branch.

Actually, it was probably a good idea for Ruby to start answering questions, lest she invoke some deadly conflict between the two kids. Either that, or prompt them to join forces against her.

"Alright, alright," Ruby finally relented. Honestly, she was starting to feel bad stringing Sora and Kairi along like that.

"Okay, in order;" Ruby began counting off, "Yes. When I was Seven. No. Yes. And to answer the last one…"

Ruby first turned to Kairi to answer her query first.

"The biggest one I've ever _killed_ was this giant bird we call a 'Nevermore'. It was about…" Ruby glanced around looking for something to use as a reference before turning around and pointing towards the far end of the beach where the dock was before tracing a line down the beach, past the giant tree with a few treehouses in it, past the freshwater spring, past the small hut that led up to the rise and _all the way_ out to the outcropping that led out to the plateau where the three of them were sitting, "…that big."

Sora and Kairi seemed to take a few moments to process what exactly Ruby was saying before proceeding to _gape_ at the prospect of something so big it would cover the entire beach.

"Uh…" Kairi was glancing back and forth with her mouth hanging open, apparently still in the process of comprehending what Ruby was saying.

"…How did you even _fight_ something that big…?" Sora gawked.

"Eh, with some Ice dust, a giant slingshot and one conveniently-placed cliff-face." Ruby replied with a 'it was literally no big deal' shrug.

Of course, there _was_ giant Wyvern that attacked Beacon and Ruby petrified right after Pyrrha was…

Ruby only just avoided sucking in a breath.

…Of course, she hadn't exactly _killed_ the Wyvern per-say, so there was no reason to mention it to Sora and Kairi. Obviously.

"Wow…" Sora stared, eyes wide in awe.

"That is _so COOL!"_ Kairi gave a giddy squeal.

For her part, Ruby still had her gaze pointed out towards the sunset in what she felt was a typical 'cool' pose, but at the same time she couldn't help glancing over to her audience to see the looks on their faces. For as long as Ruby could remember, she'd been in their place, looking up in awe at all cool, badass huntsmen and huntresses.

It was a new feeling to actually _be_ that cool, badass huntress. A feeling that was giving Ruby flutters all its own.

That having been said… Ruby decided it was time to steer the conversation to safer waters before it drifted into the more… _uncomfortable_ parts of Ruby's time as a huntress.

And thankfully, Ruby had _just_ the thing. A topic that could leave Team RWBY, JNPR, CFVY, SSSN or basically any other team at Beacon tied up for _hours_.

"Hey Sora," Ruby started, "You ever wonder why we're here?"

"Uh…" Ruby could practically hear the confused look Sora was giving her, "You mean like, why we're out here on this island? Because I'm pretty sure it's to watch the sunset."

"No, no," Ruby tried again, "I mean _why_ are we _here?_ Why are _any of us_ here right now?"

"To… work on the raft?" now Kairi was speaking up with her own confused look, "Hang out with friends?"

"Ah… nevermind." Ruby waved off the question. Well, so much for that idea. Sora and his friends were great kids, but they weren't the same conversationalists her team and classmates were…

"I wonder that every day," a new voice spoke up. Ruby, Kairi and Sora looked back to see Riku, apparently done with his sulking, stepping off the wooden bridge connecting the plateau to the rest of the small island.

"You feeling better, Riku?" Ruby looked down to the younger boy. She hadn't seen him ever since he'd wandered off after their little fight in quite the epic 'pout walk'. Honestly, Ruby might have been getting worried if she hadn't spied him a few times sulking in one of the tree-houses built into the massive tree that dominated the center of the island. Even then, Ruby felt she really needed to at least ask how the kid was doing…

"I wonder why we're _here_, of all places." …and it seemed like Riku was too caught up in a little moment of his to notice Ruby's question, instead leaning up against the bent over bench-tree and reaching out to the sunset-horizon.

Ah, see! That was kind of random philosophizing Ruby was going for!

"Of all the worlds that are out there, why did we have to born on _this_ one?"

Oh, wait. It looked like Riku had a way more _specific_ point he was wondering about.

"Why did we have to be born on this _one_ world where nothing ever happens?" Riku continued, "A world so cut off from anywhere else?"

The silver-haired boy held out his hand, as if reaching for the horizon.

"And if there are other worlds out there, then our world is just one small piece of something much bigger. So we could have just as easily been born on one of _those_ worlds, right?" Riku looked up to the others on the tree-bench.

"I don't know," Sora shrugged as he leaned back on the tree, clearly much of Riku's little speech was going clear over his head.

Ruby meanwhile raised a curious eyebrow as she listened. She hadn't pegged Riku as the kind to be this thoughtful.

"Exactly," Riku continued, "That's why we need to go out there and find out," Riku turned back to the sunset, "Just sitting here doing nothing won't change a thing."

Up on the bench, Ruby couldn't help but give a smile and nod of approval. _That_ sentiment was one she could appreciate.

"You've been giving this a lot of thought, haven't you?" Ruby spoke up to Riku.

"It's thanks to you," Riku turned to Ruby, "You coming here, telling us all about your world, it made me want to get out there more than ever and _see_ those other worlds!" Riku clenched his fists, clearly fired up.

"Well, you're welcome, I guess," Ruby chuckled, "So Riku, say you do make to another world. What are you going to do there?"

"Heh. I'll tell you what I'm going to do there," Riku gave what sounded like a single confident chuckle, "I'm going to get _stronger_. Then I'll go to _another_ world, and I'll get stronger _there_ too,"

Riku then turned to Ruby, who was giving him a curious look, "and one day when I'm finally strong enough, I'll come to _your world_ Ruby. And then, we'll have a _rematch!_" Riku pointed a finger at Ruby with what he clearly _thought_ was an intense, brooding look.

For her part, Ruby was _really_ resisting the urge to facepalm.

_Geez…_ this was really some macho rival/revenge thing, wasn't it? Where you beat a guy in _one_ friendly spar, and suddenly it's all 'You have insulted my precious honor!' and 'I won't leave you alone until you give me a rematch' and 'if you beat me again, then I _really_ won't leave you alone!'

Ruby could still remember a run-in with one of those types in her first year at Signal. She'd won a spar against this one guy in the year ahead of her, who then proceeded to hound Ruby for the rest of the day.

Or at least until lunch period when Yang found out and gave the jerk an _epic_ ass-kicking in front of half the school. It got Yang a week of suspension, a giant icecream sundae (which she shared with Ruby) and an early birthday present from Dad, plus some advice on how pull off that sort of thing _without_ getting caught from Uncle Qrow.

But it wasn't until her time at Beacon and hanging out with upperclassman Coco Adel that Ruby learned the _real_ way to nip one of these problems in the bud:

"You know Riku," Ruby sent the younger boy a wry look, "if all you wanted was to get better at fighting, I can just give you some pointers. You don't have to go one some epic revenge quest."

"Uh…" Riku's epic point began to crumble, the wind taken out of his edgy sails, "Well, I… uh… I don't need your help!" Riku turned away, crossing his arms in _an_ _attempt_ to look brooding as he tried, and failed, to hide the growing blush on his face.

"Aww, what's the matter Riku?" Kairi teased, "You don't want help from a _girl?"_

It was pretty clear that Kairi had _zero intention_ of letting Riku off the hook for that 'But you're a girl' comment from earlier.

"I… Uh…" Riku stammered, "I… I'm gonna go get the boats ready!" with that, Riku turned and started _not quite_ running across the bridge.

"What was that?! I couldn't quite hear you!" Kairi jumped off the branch and ran over to the bridge to call after Riku, "It sounded like you said you didn't want help from a girl even though she's clearly better than you at everything!"

Oof, Harsh. But not inaccurate.

When Riku broke into a full run, both Sora and Kairi broke out into laughter. Even Ruby couldn't hold back some chuckles.

"Oh!" Kairi suddenly stopped, as if she'd just remembered something important, "Hey, uh… Ruby?" the young redhead turned somewhat hesitantly to look up to the older girl.

"Hmm? What is it Kairi?" Ruby looked down to the younger girl.

"I… uh," Kairi scratched the back of her head, glancing away from Ruby shyly as she put her other hand in her pocket, "I… made you something. I thought you might like it…"

"Really?" Ruby's face lit up in a smile as she moved her legs and slid off the branch to land in front of Kairi, "What is it?" Ruby knew that Kairi was usually a very thoughtful girl, so she found herself pretty curious as to what this could be. Plus, Ruby was always a sucker for presents from friends.

"Oh! It's, uh… it's nothing _that_ special…" Kairi still looked away shyly, clearly trying to hide the reddening of her cheeks, "It's just… this." Kairi pulled her hand out of her pocket, opening it to present something to Ruby.

It was a pendent, or amulet of some kind. Four teardrop-shaped seashells, all long and slender, stitched together at their wider ends with string. The shells were folded up at the moment, but it looked like they'd create a four-pointed star. One of the seashells had another string pushed through its top, looking like it could be hung from something.

"Huh," Ruby cocked her head to one side in curiosity, "what is it?"

"It's… it's a Wayfinder," Kairi replied, having apparently regained enough of her composure to look directly at Ruby again, "sailors used to make these to hang on their ships. They're supposed to bring good luck to travelers."

Kairi glanced away shyly for a moment, "I'm working on one of these for our raft, but I thought, well… You're a traveler too, so…" she trailed off a bit awkwardly.

But Ruby simply smiled wide, "Thanks Kairi. I appreciate it." And she did. She really wanted to have some kind of memento of her time here.

And hey, Ruby was never one to turn down a little good luck wherever she could find it.

"Uh, Kairi?" Sora called down, giving Kairi's gift a curious look, "Aren't those things supposed to have five shells or something?"

"Oh! Yeah…" Kairi jumped before looking sheepish, "They're usually supposed to be made with five points, like the Papou fruits," Kairi gestured to the yellow star-shaped fruit that grew on a few of the surrounding trees, "I was only able to find four Thalassa shells that worked, but then I remembered what you told me about your teammates and I thought, well…" Kairi lifted the amulet up to present it to Ruby, unfolding it to reveal the insides of the shells.

Ruby felt her breath catch, and her eyes widen.

The insides of the shells, the four points of the star, were painted Red, White, Black and Yellow. At the wider bases of the shells had been carefully painted a Rose, a Snowflake, a Single Flame, and a Raging Fire. And at the center of the amulet was placed a rose-shaped token that bore a striking similarity to Ruby's own emblem.

Ruby stared, her formerly casual air gone completely. With a hand that was only shaking a _little bit_, Ruby took the offered pendent.

Dimly, Ruby was aware of Sora speaking up, asking Kairi something. But in this one, singular moment, Ruby couldn't be bothered to care about _anything_ being said.

Instead, all Ruby could focus on in this moment was the Wayfinder now in her hand.

Ever since she'd washed up on these islands, Ruby had been doing her best not to think… _too_ hard about the current state of her team. Just the good times, the happy memories. Not all the… _other things_ that happened between then and now.

But even with those memories, it'd still been over _six months_ since she'd seen her team. Six months since Beacon fell. Six months since Weiss was taken away by her father, Blake vanished into the night and Yang closed herself off from the world…

Even now with her drive to track down Weiss, Blake and Yang wherever they might be on this new world, Ruby still couldn't help feeling their time together, all those memories, blurring together…

But somehow, this simple image… Team RWBY's colors and their own little symbols _together_ in one place…

It brought everything back. _Everything_.

Heck, Ruby didn't know if Kairi picked up on this one little detail or if it was just a lucky guess, but even the symbols were painted in the colors of their partner's. Ruby's Rose was White, Weiss's Snowflake was Red, Blake's Flame was Yellow, and Yang's Fire was Black.

Ruby remembered showing Kairi some photos of Team RWBY she still had on her scroll a few days ago. At the time she hadn't been thinking about it, but those photos were one of only a few mementos Ruby had of their time together at Beacon. Things like Weiss's songs, or copies of a few of Blake's favorite books in e-book form, or some of Yang's best zingers…

But to have something… physical, this _tangible_ representation of her team Ruby could hold tight in her hand. Something that could somehow _instantly_ remind her of her team, her _family…_

"I… uh," Kairi was back to glancing away shyly, "I thought that since you're looking for your teammates, you could use someth-"

Faster than a blink of an eye, Ruby's arms shot out and pulled Kairi into a hug.

"_Thank you."_ Ruby nearly choked out, arms pulling the other girl in tight, "Thank you, Kairi."

For a girl who once upon a time reallylikedgiving out physical affection to her friends and family, this was the first time in… a _while_ that Ruby had actually _hugged_ someone.

It felt good.

…

It was then that Ruby noticed that Kairi was suddenly _very still_.

"Uh, Kairi?" Ruby asked, knocked out of her own emotional episode as she stepped back, "You okay?" Maybe she'd gone a bit overboard on that display of gratitude…

Kairi was effectively frozen stiff. Her eyes were wide and she didn't seem to be blinking. Or… breathing, for that matter. Also, she was blushing. A lot. And if Ruby listened closely, she could make _just _make out some extremely high-pitched squeeing…

"Kairi?" Ruby tried again, waving her hand in front of the red-head's face.

Kairi blinked, apparently having been snapped out of whatever stupor she'd been in.

Kairi looked at Ruby.

Her face then turned a good… twenty shades or so _more red_.

"_Okayyou'rewelcomeImgonnagohelpRikuwiththeboatsOkaybyenow!"_

With that, Kairi proceeded to spin right around on her heels and _bolted._ Dashing across the wooden bridge and making down it to the beach at speeds Ruby thought even _Blake_ would be hard pressed to match.

"…Uh, what was _that_ about?" Sora spoke up, his head cocked to the side in a look of utter _bafflement_ at what just happened.

For her part, Ruby found herself awkwardly scratching her head and giving an uneasy chuckle.

Yeah… that was… _definitely_ a bit overboard in terms of affection.

Unbidden, Ruby was reminded of this one time early on at Signal, back when she was Kairi's age, during a joint field-trip with Vale's other local Combat Academies, and how one particular older girl with a beret and sunglasses from Pharos Academy that Ruby would later know as Coco Adel was able to evoke a _very similar_ reaction in a good _dozen_ of Ruby's female classmates… and _maybe_ Ruby herself. Just a little bit.

Yeah… sometime after Kairi… cooled off, Ruby might need to have a talk with her about a…_ few things_. Admittedly some things that even Ruby herself didn't fully get yet, or even _mostly_ get yet… But at least a _decent_ idea.

Hopefully without… _too_ much unbearable awkwardness.

"So… was that some _girl_ _thing_ or something?" Sora spoke up a little louder, catching Ruby's attention.

"…Yeah, pretty much." Ruby muttered in reply as she hopped back up on the tree-bench. Sure, a whole bundle of complicated emotions being summed up by someone as _some girl thing_ might normally be a bit _vexing_ to Ruby, but on the other hand it stopped a line of discussion Ruby _really_ didn't want to follow further at the moment, so she'd take it.

"Huh," Sora cocked his head the other direction in curiosity before he seemed to accept the answer, "I don't think I've _ever_ seen Kairi that fired up about something. But I guess that _is_ a really cool Wayfinder she made." Sora added, pointing out the amulet that Ruby was still holding in her hand.

"Yeah… it is," Ruby replied, suddenly reminded of the thing that triggered that burst of affection. Shifting her hand to the pair of strings leading away from it, Ruby held the Wayfinder up in front of the setting sun. The four flower-like petals of the amulet unfolded, fully displaying the four colors and four sigils. The Wayfinder turned from side to side on the strings, catching bits of the evening light.

"_Cooooll…"_ Sora stared transfixed at the sight.

Ruby simply smiled, this reminder of Team RWBY calling forth all sorts of treasured memories. Of Beacon, of her friends, of her Team, her _family_…

Their first missions together…

Yang's helping hand whenever they'd spar…

Blake's kind words those time they'd read together…

And… that _beautiful_ _smile_ Weiss gave her when the two studied together…

Of course, thoughts of Weiss, Blake, Yang and the others just reminded Ruby of the things she _needed_ to do, and what that meant for her new friends…

"…Sora," Ruby started again, looking over to the young boy as she lowered the Wayfinder, "I'm going to be leaving soon."

"Wha…?" Sora's head whipped around, a look of confusion on his face, "But... but…" He stammered in shock and disbelief, "_Why?_ Me and Riku still need to show you those cool secret places on the other side of town, and I know Kairi really likes hanging out with you, and we still need to hear more of your stories…" the young boy babbled off all sorts of things Ruby had been doing with their little group of friends over the past few days, "and… and Mom said you could stay with us as long as you wanted…" he trailed off.

Ruby smiled sadly. It was surprising how quickly Sora had come to see her as this 'cool big sister' figure.

Actually, now that Ruby thought about it… she was almost same age Yang was when they first started at Beacon and became Team RWBY. And Sora was almost as old as Ruby herself was back then…

Ruby couldn't help but wonder if this was how Yang felt.

But thinking about Yang only served to remind Ruby of the immutable facts:

"I have to find them Sora," Ruby looked out towards the horizon, the stars already starting to be visible in the dimming light, "I have to find my team." Ruby's eyes drifted down to the Wayfinder still clutched in her hand.

"Oh," Sora's stammering suddenly came up short, his own gaze following Ruby's to the four-pointed amulet, "…Yeah, I… I guess you do…" Sora trailed off again, a tone of resigned understanding, and just a bit of guilt.

"Hey, don't get me wrong," Ruby gave Sora a reassuring smile, "you, your mom, Kairi, Riku and all your other friends, you've all been great to me ever since I got here," Ruby extended her hand to give Sora a comforting pat on the shoulder, "I can't thank you enough for that."

"It's just," Ruby looked back out to the horizon, "my _Team_ is somewhere out there, Weiss, Blake and Yang, and I need to find them."

Sora nodded, still clearly torn up, but understanding of what Ruby was saying.

"But, you'll come visit us again, right?" Sora spoke up, unease clear in his voice.

_That_ gave Ruby a moment's pause. She really hadn't given much thought to what would happen _after_ finding Weiss, Blake and Yang. Presumably they'd get to work on finding a way back to Remnant…

Then again, once Team RWBY was back together… well, the four of them could do pretty much whatever they wanted.

Including…

"…Yeah, I'll come back to visit," Ruby flashed Sora a wide grin, "and when I do, you'll get to meet Team RWBY! All four of us!"

That statement definitely made Sora perk up a bit, the younger boy managing to return Ruby's smile with a big nod, "Yeah!"

The two returned to looking at the sunset for a moment of comfortable silence…

"How…" Sora spoke up, the uncertainty back in his voice, "How long do you think you'll be gone?"

"As long as it takes." This time, Ruby could only manage a small smile. It was true, and there was no way for her to sugar-coat things for Sora this time.

No matter _what_ it took, no matter _how long_ it took, Ruby _would_ find her team. No ifs, ands or buts. If she had to travel to the ends of this earth, so be it. If she was searching for years, so be it.

Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly the best news to a young boy who just wanted to spend more time with his new favorite older-sibling-figure.

"Hey, cheer up!" Ruby flashed Sora a reassuring smile, "It's not like I'm leaving first thing tomorrow. We'll still have at least a couple more days to hang out!" with that she reached over to ruffle Sora's hair.

The younger boy gave a small smile, though still seemed a bit dejected.

But Ruby had _just the thing_ to cheer him up.

"Hey, what do you say you and me come out here early tomorrow?" Ruby spoke up, "And I teach you a few moves that'll _waste_ Riku." she added in a conspiratorial whisper with a mischievous grin.

_That_ got Sora's attention, the boy's head whipping around and face lighting up in expectation of both _cool fighting moves_ AND _getting to beat Riku at something!_

"_Really?"_ Sora spoke up, eyes sparkling.

"_Really Really_." Ruby answered, her face split by a _massive_ toothy grin. Ruby had to admit, she wouldn't have thought the prospect of teaching would be so appealing. In particular, Ruby wanted to test the kid out on a few weapons _other_ than simple swords.

If it turned out Sora had a knack for staves and polearms, well… That opened up a _LOT_ of fun possibilities.

For his part, Sora was currently _vibrating_ in his seat and making a sound not unlike the one Kairi made back when Ruby mentioned the whole 'I'm a Huntress' bit, a huge giddy smile on his face.

Idly, Ruby was wondering if she'd have grab the kid to keep him from vibrating off the bench…

"_Hey Sora! Ruby!" _both looked over to the yell. Down the beach, Riku was yelling to them from the dock, standing next to a boat and a still pretty flustered looking Kairi, _"The boat's all ready to go!"_

Sora perked up at that, jumping off the branch. As he was about to run off, Sora looked up to Ruby, who hadn't moved yet.

"You go on ahead," Ruby gestured towards the other kids down the beach, "I'll catch up."

"Oh, okay." Sora hopped off the branch, "Wait, we're taking both the boats with us…" he trailed off.

"Don't need one." Ruby sent him a half-grin and a wink.

Sora blinked owlishly for a moment, but then found himself smiling back.

"Right. See you at home!"

As Sora and his friends ran off, Ruby turned back to the sunset.

Once again, Ruby was alone with her thoughts.

And yet… as Ruby held up the Wayfinder again, she didn't _feel_ so alone…

Reaching into her belt pack, Ruby retrieved her scroll and custom-built red headphones. Putting on the headphones, Ruby keyed up the music app on her Scroll, hitting 'Shuffle'.

All the while, the four-pointed amulet remained in Ruby's hand, held gently between her fingers.

Ruby's eyes widened in surprised as the first few piano notes of a certain song reached her ears, before a small, sad smile spread on her face. Holding up the Wayfinder, Ruby found herself gently brushing a finger over the red snowflake, and the white rose…

"_One Life… Is not a long time…"_

"_When you're waiting… for a small sign…"_

* * *

AN: I'm a little ashamed to admit that Ruby getting her own Wayfinder was an idea I didn't think of until I was halfway through this chapter.

Also, as a bit of housekeeping, I'm sort-of retconning the whole 'Ruby is 17' bit I mentioned in the AN a couple chapters back to 'Ruby is ALMOST 17', after reading a number of theories (including one very interesting one that Ruby's 17th birthday might actually be a plot-point in V7). Honestly, it kinda works better this way as it put Ruby more in the nebulous 'not really a kid anymore but not quite an adult yet' place that makes her dynamic with Sora and co. so interesting. And makes the whole deal with Kairi having a crush on her less weird.

Also, I should stress that a CRUSH is all that is going to be. I think the end of this chapter should make it pretty clear where Ruby's actual romantic interests fall.

Speaking of, Yes I know that 'Wings' is more of a Blake/Yang song, but I figure it fits Ruby's current situation rather well. Also, Yes, I headcanon that 'Wings' IS a song sung by Weiss in-universe and Ruby has made sure to have ALL of her partner's songs on her scroll. Weiss's singing talent is honestly one of sadly unexplored bits of this show.

Next Time: Light Fades, Darkness Falls...

And The Little Red Hood goes a'Reaping


	5. Night of Fate, Night of a Hunt (Part 1)

_"The Moon is close. It will be a long Hunt tonight..."_

\- Gehrman; the First Hunter

* * *

She's falling again. Falling through the void.

Eyes open.

The same dream plays out before her once again.

The beach, the ocean, _Weiss…_

The wave, the water, _Blake and Yang…_

The evening sky, the falling stars, _the falling her…_

But this time, something is different.

She falls through the sky, and falls through the water, but where she should be falling through an endless void, she comes to rest on soft sand.

Okay, this is different.

As Ruby gets to her feet, the ground beneath her suddenly lights up. What seemed to once be sand becomes a mass of birds taking flight. On instinct, Ruby raises an arm to shield her face, but none of the birds strike her.

Lowering her arm, Ruby watches the birds fly off. Squinting her eyes, Ruby can just make out a circle of light from above that the birds are arrayed around.

Somehow… this all reminds Ruby of the times she'd visit Mom on the cliff and watch the birds fly off into the sunset.

Then Ruby's eyes are drawn downward, down to where the ground once was. She gasps.

Where once was darkened sand, is now bright, pristine glass cast in a multitude of colors. A stained-glass floor depicting four large heart shapes arrayed around the center. It takes Ruby a moment to realize that the design is strikingly similar to the Wayfinder Kairi gave her…

Four hearts, colored Red, White, Black and Yellow. Each emblazoned with a corresponding emblem set against a backdrop of swirling petals, the night sky and a shattered white orb that Ruby instantly recognizes as Remnant's broken Moon.

Ruby's ears pick up… chanting of some kind. And a singular voice. It sounds very close but at the same time faint and unclear, like standing next to someone listening to earphones with the volume turned up. At the same time, Ruby can hear faints footsteps, and as she turns to scan the area, Ruby can make out wisps of movement – hints of a formless apparition and shadows, a silhouette swinging a sword at invisible foes.

But then Ruby's silver eyes pick out something else. Something much more tangible.

The glass circle she's standing on is surrounded by a void. Black, formless and empty… except for one point off in the distance.

There's _something_ out there, a vague 'X'-shape gleaming with light. Sticking out like a beacon in all this darkness.

Curiosity overtaking all other thought, Ruby starts walking towards the shape. Stepping off the circle, Ruby's feet find purchase on what _feels_ like solid ground, even if she can't shake the impression that she's _not supposed to be doing this._

Ruby ignores this impression and continues on. Before too long, the shape comes into focus.

It's… a pair of keys. _Big_ keys. Like… _sword-sized_ keys floating crossed in the air. In fact…

Ruby tilts her head quizzically as she approaches.

Yeah, it looks like they are in fact some kind of… _sword-keys_. They both have definite grips, a five-sided handguard that goes fully around the grip and a long cylindrical 'blade' capped with a key-piece at the end. Both keys look to be identical, save for one having a silver blade and gold guard while the other has the same colors in reversed places.

Standing before the two oddities, Ruby tilts her head left and right, trying to parse out what exactly she is looking at. Out of simple curiosity, Ruby reaches out to grab the silver-bladed key…

Then the rumbling begins.

Ruby comes up short, curiosity suddenly replaced with _focus_. Narrowed eyes scan the area for what might be causing this. It sounds like a storm…

_**THE DOOR IS OPENING**_

Ruby has barely processed this when the thunder BOOMS.

* * *

Ruby bolted straight up in her bed, nearly leaping all the way to her feet.

But unlike other times when she'd woken up from a really bad dream, Ruby's eyes weren't wide. Neither was her breathing hard or her skin wracked with a cold sweat.

Instead Ruby found her breathing _even_ and _measured_, her eyes _focused_. She could feel an adrenaline rush coming on as finely-honed combat instincts communicated _Danger_.

_Something_ was very, _very wrong_.

Her ears caught the sound of wind buffeting against the house. Absently noting from the clock that it was 00:41, Ruby peered out the window next to her bed.

There was a storm brewing, that was for certain. The wind was picking up, with palm trees waving back and forth. Down past the beach, Ruby could make out countless white caps on the water as the sea churned.

And up above, the sky was packed thick with billowing, churning dark clouds. The clouds were swirling, rotating. Somewhere, a lightning bolt cracked the sky, briefly illuminating the clouds from within.

Ruby watched the shrouding dark clouds…

Something was wrong. Ruby couldn't explain it. She couldn't even give an exact term to what she was feeling.

But at those clouds gave Ruby an uneasy shiver. It was a feeling not unlike the one she got when the Gr-

"_Ruby!"_ the muffled voice of a woman and hurried knocking on the bedroom door knocked Ruby from her thoughts, _"Are you awake?"_

"Ms. Dawn?" In nearly a flash, Ruby was out of bed, across the room and at the door, "What's wrong?"

Opening the door, Ruby was met with the sight of a woman with mid-length auburn hair wearing a nightgown and a hastily put-on coat. Bright blue eyes identical to Sora's were simultaneously dim with sleep and widened with concern - the textbook look of someone awakened in the middle of the night by something bad.

"It's Sora," the boy's mother spoke in a panicked voice, "he's gone! He ran out there in the middle of this storm!"

Ruby felt a brief flash of fear before adrenaline and focus took over and silver eyes narrowed.

"When did you see him last?"

"A-About an hour ago," Dawn stuttered for a moment before regaining some focus herself, "I saw his light was on and told him it was past bedtime. And I'm pretty sure I heard the door slam sometime after that. I was about to run out looking for him, but with how much time you've been spending with Sora lately, I thought you might have a better idea where he could've gone…"

There was something unspoken in what Dawn just said, a sentiment that briefly caught Ruby off guard.

Dawn was effectively saying that she _trusted_ Ruby. Trusted Ruby with her son's safety, perhaps just as much as herself.

It was strange, Dawn had known Ruby for less than a week, and Ruby hadn't even told Dawn about her background as a huntress, someone who's job it was to go out into the dark unknown to help those in need. Yet, had some of that come across anyway?

The surprise Ruby felt was quickly squashed though. Whatever her personal hangups might be, they were _not important_ at the moment.

Right now, Ruby _had a job to do_.

Besides, Ruby _did_ in fact have a pretty good idea where Sora might have run off to…

"Sit tight, I'll find him."

* * *

Ruby raced down the path towards the beach, red cloak billowing behind her, the wind whipping at her hair, the first few drops of rain splashing her face.

Ruby barely noticed any of this.

Something about that storm, something about this whole situation…

It all gave Ruby a _bad feeling_. It was the kind of bad feeling that usually preceded Grimm attacks.

Absently, Ruby felt the familiar weight of Crescent Rose on her back, as well as other things. Gone were the casual clothes she'd been wearing the last few days. For the first time since she arrived, Ruby was in full kit and uniform. Well-treaded combat boots gripped the dirt beneath her feet. The familiar weight of spare magazine cases hung from her waist around her combat skirt. All around, Ruby could hear the faint 'clinking' of spare clips and rounds bouncing in various pockets and pouches.

Even Ruby's small backpack was strapped securely to her back, containing literally all of her gear and possessions. Normally, Ruby wasn't the kind to lug _all_ of her equipment into a combat zone. Her pack might not be particularly heavy, but extra weight was still extra weight, especially for a huntress as focused on speed and mobility as Ruby was.

But something about tonight gave Ruby a certain _feeling_… A feeling that this _wasn't_ the time to be leaving gear behind. A feeling that Ruby might need _anything…_ or _everything_ tonight.

And as Ruby dashed down the path and the beach loomed closer and closer, as the wind picked up more and more and whipped harder at her cape and clothes, Ruby felt that _feeling_, that shiver in the back of her mind grow more and more.

It wasn't the _exact_ same feeling Ruby knew. Not _quite_ like the feeling of _rage_ and _hatred_ and _hunger_ that the Grimm exuded.

Yet the palpable feeling of _Danger_ was all too clear.

Ruby had no real idea what she was going to find out there tonight. Nothing in the local histories she'd read made mention of actual monsters or first-hand accounts of fighting them.

Of course, just because nobody had ever heard of something didn't mean such a thing didn't exist. And what Ruby was feeling at the moment was _all too familiar_ to her.

Ruby's silver eyes narrowed.

If there _were_ monsters out there tonight, then they were going to meet a _Huntress_.

As she made it onto the beach, Ruby noticed that all three of the rowboats were missing.

_Sora, Kairi AND Riku?_

Okay, that gave Ruby a solid number on how many she was looking for. And either way, it wasn't like she was going to be using a boat anyway.

Not slowing down one bit, Ruby raced onto the dock jutting out a good 20 meters into the water, her eyes focused on the island a good 300 meters further out. As she neared the end of the dock, Ruby's hand gripped Crescent Rose. In a flash, the sniper scythe was unfolded, her blade end pointed back.

Leaping from the end of the dock, Ruby squeezed the trigger, holding tight to Crescent Rose as the resulting shot sent them flying into the air towards the island. As she reached the peak of her ballistic arc, Ruby's cloak flickered and billowed before Ruby shot forward even further in a burst of rose petals.

Between the recoil boost and a burst of semblance, Ruby easily cleared the gap between the mainland and the island, touching down on the beach in a textbook landing strategy.

The instant Ruby's feet hit the sand, she could feel it. A pit in her stomach and a chill down her spine. Half a lifetime's worth of battle-hardened danger instincts flaring to life.

Ruby didn't know if they were Grimm. She didn't know _what_ they were. But she did know one thing:

There were _Monsters_ about.

Ruby's eyes narrowed and gripped Crescent Rose tight as she dashed down the beach.

Time to go _hunting_.

* * *

Sora had _absolutely_ _no idea_ what was going on.

He'd come running out to the island at first because the storm made him worried about the raft. They'd left it near the water and the storm might wreck it or even pull the raft out to sea!

But as he'd rowed over to the island, Sora noticed that the storm was getting worse. The thick, dark clouds were rotating and swirling in odd shapes, all centered above the island.

And when Sora finally got to the island… _the shadows came._

Sora thought they were just regular shadows all over the beach created by the occasional flash of lightning. But just as he stepped off the dock, all those shadows _stood up._

They were squat, bulbous creatures as big as Sora that looked almost like some kind of giant _bug_. With bodies of inky darkness, big, round heads with long antennae and glowing, sickly yellow eyes, they skittered along the ground on spindly legs and oversized feet, as well as their likewise spindly arms that ended in large hands with _long claws_ for fingers…

And they were _EVERYWHERE_.

Sora had still been trying to _process_ what he was seeing when a few of them came after him.

Now Sora was running. Running down the beach. He didn't even really know _where_ he was running. He was just trying to _get away from the shadows._

Of course, Sora _couldn't_ get away from the shadows. Because they were _everywhere_. All over the beach, all over the island for all he knew. All the while the wind howled, and thunder split the night.

Sora's running suddenly came to a stop. A group of the shadow creatures was right in front of him. And they were _looking right at him_.

And then the monsters leapt at him.

But then, even over the den of the storm, Sora heard the loud 'crack' of… a gunshot?

The closest of the monsters _exploded._

Then Sora felt a _new_ wind buffet him, and his vision was filled with _Red._

The monsters that were leaping towards him fell to the ground in pieces, and standing protectively in front of Sora was a figure in a familiar red cloak fluttering in the stormy winds.

Of course, the thing that drew Sora's eye most was the thing being held almost _casually_ in the figure's right hand.

A red and black pole that had to be _at least_ twice as long as Sora was tall that looked almost like some kind of super-long _rifle_, capped at one end with a metal blade as big as the wooden swords he and Riku fought with. And at the other end… _was a blade_ _bigger than he was!_ A massive curved blade the shape of a crescent moon, colored a mix of blood-red, midnight-black, metallic grey and a silver edge that was _shimmering_ in the gloom, looking as if the blade had just split_ darkness itself…_

"…_Ruby?"_ Sora stammered out, struck by a mixture of disbelief and _awe._

"You okay Sora?" Ruby spared only a glance back towards him. Sora was taken aback by the voice. Gone was the upbeat, affectionate, playful and friendly tone Ruby always had, replaced with a voice that was calm, even, _focused_ and _hardened_.

Even the brief look she'd given Sora held none of the warmth that it normally did, instead Ruby's gaze was quiet, focused and _intense_, silver eyes _shimmering_ like the edge of her blade.

It almost _scared_ Sora more than the monsters…

"Sora?" the voice came again, knocking Sora from his thoughts as he saw that Ruby was looking at him again, a look that seemed a bit more concerned than before.

"Y-Yeah. I'm… I'm okay." Sora managed to reply, stammering a lot more than he would ever admit.

"Good," a bit of the warmth Sora knew had crept back into Ruby's voice, but lost none of the _focus_ and intensity, "have you seen Kairi or Riku?"

"N-No," Sora was doing his best to control his stammering, "I haven't seen them…" Wait, were Riku and Kairi here on the island? Wouldn't that mean…

An odd 'swishing' sound suddenly caught Sora's attention. Looking ahead, Sora felt a pit in his stomach as he saw that the beach in front of them was still swarming with those shadow creatures.

_And they were moving towards them._

Ruby saw them too. In fact… Sora realized that Ruby must have been watching them the whole time she was talking to Sora.

"Okay, Sora I need you to listen to me," Ruby spoke up with that same _focused_ tone as she shifted the massive weapon in her grip, "I'm going to draw those things' attention and thin their numbers a bit." Even with her focused, intense tone, the way Ruby talked about getting the attention of _shadow monsters_ and _thinning their numbers_ had an almost _casual_ tone to it.

Like this was something Ruby did _all the time._

"Sora," Ruby continued, "once I get their attention, you need to get back to the boats and _get out of here._"

Wait, what? "Huh? What are you saying?" Was Ruby asking him to just _run away?_ "What about Riku and Kairi-?"

"_I'll find them._ Don't worry," Ruby's tone redoubled in intensity, her eyes still focused on the approaching shadows.

"B-But…" Sora stammered.

"_Go."_ Ruby's tone left _zero_ room for argument.

The monsters moved closer, yellow eyes gleaming.

The massive scythe in her hand was flipped backwards. Ruby crouched and pulled the trigger.

And the crack of a gunshot cut through the night as Ruby _flew_ forwards.

The first few monsters were just starting to leap forwards when Ruby flew past them, the gleaming blade of her scythe slicing them to pieces.

Ruby was moving so _fast_ Sora could barely see what was even happening. One moment she was near the surf. Then in a blink of an eye she was near the trees and in another blink, almost to the shacks.

And all the while, monsters fell in her wake.

For a few moments Sora was rooted to the ground, staring in shock, awe and even a little fear. He'd known Ruby was a fighter, a warrior, but not… When he first learned that, Sora thought Ruby was someone like the people in books and movies he'd seen who fought monsters and saved people in need. Knights and warriors who battled monsters and crossed blades with bad guys.

But… Ruby wasn't _fighting_ these monsters.

She was _slaughtering _them - cutting them down by the dozens in a way that almost reminded Sora of that one R-rated movie that he and Riku once snuck in to see.

Sora suddenly remembered something Ruby said about herself earlier today. She hadn't called herself a 'warrior' or a 'knight'.

Ruby called herself a '_Huntress'_.

Sora shook himself out of his stupor, remembering what Ruby had _just told him_. When Ruby told him to run, Sora had been confused and worried that Ruby was telling him to run away while she faced a horde of monsters all alone. But now…

With another 'crack' of a gunshot, Ruby landed in the middle of a larger group and proceeded to cut through more than a _dozen_ of the monsters with a single slice.

…Yeah, Ruby clearly did not need _any_ help whatsoever.

Taking a deep breath, Sora began moving up the beach where Ruby had cleared a path towards the giant tree and ridge that loomed over the center of the island. It seemed like the monsters were mostly gathered on the beach itself, and the path that ran from the tree back to the dock looked to be clear…

Sora suddenly came up short as he noticed something moving along that path. Moving around the tree and into the small cave nestled between its great roots and the rocky ridge.

It was a figure… Sora tried to get a good look at them in all this darkness…

Was… was that Kairi?

Making sure there were none of those monsters close by, Sora started making his way towards the cave…

* * *

There was something oddly comforting about getting back into action after an extended break.

A couple of the strange little insect-like shadow creatures leapt up towards Ruby, and were slashed in half by an off-hand backswing of Crescent Rose.

Though it probably helped that Ruby was up against some of the _easiest_ enemies she'd ever had to fight. For one, they were _tiny_ compared to even minor Beowulves. Heck they were smaller than _her,_ barely even coming up to Ruby's shoulders!

But more than that, these shadow creatures seemed to not be nearly as… _aggressive_ as the Grimm Ruby knew. Oh, they were certainly hostile, with the way the creatures came at Ruby, slashing at her with spindly, dagger-like arms and claws. But those attacks seemed to lack the… _intensity_ that the Grimm brought. They didn't seem to possess the unbridled _hate_ and murderous _rage_ that practically defined the creatures of Grimm. Instead, these shadows gave off a sense of… something else.

Not that Ruby actually _minded_ this change of pace one bit. Dashing around a larger clump of the shadows, Ruby brought Crescent Rose around in a spinning flurry, her blade shredding almost a dozen of the monsters in a single flourish.

Of course, that didn't mean Ruby wasn't taking the situation with anything less than the utmost seriousness. Just because the monsters might be easy-mode for her didn't change the fact that they were still _very_ hostile. And there were still two unconfirmed kids she needed to find.

Speaking of which, as the action reached a momentary lull Ruby's eyes made a sweep of the battlefield. In the darkness of the night and the storm most people would be effectively blind, but Ruby's trained eyes could pick up the important details. The trick was picking up the outline of the terrain and then watching for movement. Glancing back, Ruby caught a glimpse of a Sora-shaped outline moving up the beach and away from the shifting shadows.

_Good_. One down, two to go. Absently, Ruby fired off a couple rounds into the shadow creatures closer to Sora's position. Best to draw as much attention to herself and _away_ from Sora, Kairi or Riku as possible. Now where was-

Ruby's ears suddenly twitched as she caught a faint cry on the winds. Spinning around to face where the sound came from, Ruby's trained eyes caught a flash of red huddled against the bluff that led up to the rope bridge out to the fight rock… as well as a _whole bunch_ of shadow creatures swarming towards it.

In the blink of an eye, Crescent Rose was flipped back, a round cycled through the chamber, and Ruby was _flying_ across the beach.

Rocketing across the swirling sands, Ruby felt herself enveloped in her semblance, in that cloud of red petals. Reaching out with Crescent Rose, Ruby felt the flash of her blade, and the dozens of shadows felled in their wake. As she neared the huddled red-headed figure surrounded by monsters though, Ruby tried something _new_.

Instead of reaching out with her hand or Crescent Rose, Ruby reached out with her _semblance_, a tendril of aura extending out like strands of her cloak…

And in less than a blink of an eye, Ruby had cut down all of the shadows and enveloped Kairi in that cloud of petals, before launching them both up onto the roof of a nearby shack.

After making a quick scan to make sure nothing was following them up here, Ruby glanced down to check on the shaking redhead who hadn't quite finished processing what just happened.

"Wha… R-Ruby…?" Kairi was clearly pretty shaken up by the attack and was only just registering the familiar red cape and silver eyes looking down at her. Ruby was also pretty sure she'd freaked Sora out with that intense look earlier, so she made sure to try something different…

"Hey," Ruby flashed a smile down to the girl she was now half-cradling with one arm, doing her best impression of Uncle Qrow's 'relax, I have this _completely_ under control' look.

For her part, Kairi was looking up at the red-clad, silver-eyed huntress in a state of shock and _awe_. At the long, bright red cloak that was swirling around them both seemingly with a life of its own… At the _colossal_ weapon being held almost casually in one hand, while the other was holding Kairi in such a _strong_ yet entirely _gentle_ grip… And at the _gleaming_ silver eyes that seemed to cut through the gloom with a twinkling shimmer, capped off with a roguish, _dashing_ smile that seemed to just light up the night…

"Uh… Kairi?" Ruby asked, seeing how the redhead had suddenly gone quiet. She wasn't going into shock, was she…?

The Ruby noticed Kairi's cheeks turning _very_ red and… Oh, crap they'd never had that conversation, did they?!

"Kairi! Focus! Please!" Ruby raised her voice to try and snap Kairi back to reality while simultaneous _desperately_ trying to not sound angry because honestly Ruby was kind of flattered that Kairi seemed to have a crush on her even though it also felt pretty weird especially with her own feelings about Weiss and GODS WHY WAS THIS SO AWKWARD?!

"EEP," this seemed to knock Kairi out of her stupor, "I'M SORRY I'M SORRY!" the redhead shook her head and apologized profusely, "I-It's, It's just…" Kairi trailed off as she awkwardly looked away, "You're REALLY pretty and _cool_ and…"

"Noted," Ruby replied with a smile and that she _desperately_ hoped was coming off as _just_ reassuring and _not flirtatious_ as she set Kairi down with a pat on the shoulder, "and we can _talk about all that later,_ but right now we've got a bit of a monster problem to deal with."

Kairi, now brought back to reality, glanced about at the swirling darkness of the storm surrounding the pair, hiding no doubt _countless_ more of those shadow creatures.

"A _bit?_" Kairi asked, both confused and just a bit incredulous.

Ruby meanwhile, had made a quick scan and noted a few more of the shadow creatures approaching the shack…

"One second," Ruby motioned to Kairi with a finger, "…and cover your ears."

And with that, Ruby brought Crescent Rose up to her shoulder, sighted down her scope and squeezed her trigger.

Six times Ruby squeezed that trigger, and six times Crescent Rose barked a thunderous roar, and six times another monster was obliterated by a high-velocity, armor-piercing round.

Having bought them a momentary reprieve, Ruby found herself unable to resist flipping Crescent Rose around to rest on her shoulder in a flourish that was _entirely _unnecessary, but also looked _really cool_, before flashing a 'this kind a thing is pretty much a Thursday evening for me' grin to Kairi.

"_Just_ a bit." Ruby replied with a wink.

As for Kairi, for just a moment the uncertainty and general terror that had gripped her this night was forgotten as her face was split by a massive, giddy smile and her blue eyes sparkled with awe.

"_So cool…"_

Honestly, that kind of praise and appreciation might normally have made Ruby blush herself, but there were more important things to focus on.

"Okay, we should be safe for a little bit," Ruby shifted Crescent Rose to a more stable carry position as she approached her friend, "Kairi, are you alright?"

"Uh… y-yeah! I think so." Kairi stammered just a bit as she was reminded of the reality of their situation, turning around in an attempt to look herself over. At the same time, Ruby was looking Kairi over herself. Thankfully, she looked basically unharmed, particularly free of any visible punctures or slashes, which those shadow creatures seemed to favor given their limbs.

"Good," Ruby nodded before getting Kairi's attention again.

"Have you seen Riku?"

"Y-Yeah!" Kairi stammering returned a bit as she remembered what she'd been doing earlier, "I saw him up on the Rock!" Kairi pointed up to the same plateau they'd all be gathered on not six hours earlier. Ruby followed her finger and caught a silhouette and a flash of blue-white hair. "I was trying to get up there, but…"

Ruby nodded in understanding. "Got it." She then proceeded to put an arm around Kairi, "Hold on!"

Normally to get up to the bluff that led out to the Rock, you went into the larger cabin built alongside it and went up the stairs inside. But right now, they didn't exactly have the time for that.

Kairi only managed a quick 'Eep!' of surprise before Ruby pulled Crescent Rose's trigger and both girls were sent _flying_ up a good ten meters before coming down on the bluff.

Collapsing Crescent Rose back into her rifle-mode, Ruby made a quick sweep of the bluff for any hostiles.

Meanwhile, Kairi was simultaneously trying to get her legs to stay straight, making sure all her insides were back in their proper places, _and_ making sure her dinner _stayed in her stomach._

"Kairi? You okay?" Ruby's hand came to rest on Kairi's shoulder, providing some much-needed stability.

"Y-Yeah, I think so," Kairi managed as the world _finally_ seemed to stop spinning, "do… do you _usually_ do stuff like that?"

Ruby's lips suddenly curled as her eyes sparkled mischievously.

"_Well…_ on the first day at the Academy, the Headmaster threw all us first-years off a cliff into a monster-infested forest, so… Yeah, pretty much."

It said a lot that Kairi had absolutely _no idea_ if Ruby was joking or not.

"Come on," Ruby gave Kairi a pat on the back, "we got an emo to save."

Kairi was about to giggle in response when the pair was suddenly buffeted by a strong gust of wind.

Ruby's own smile fell as she steadied herself while also checking on Kairi as the wind picked up. The storm was getting worse, a grim reminder of the danger they were still in. In fact…

Ruby's eyes narrowed, the _focus_ returning as she double-checked their surroundings. There weren't any of those shadow creatures in the immediate area… and yet that _feeling_ so much _like_ and yet _not-like_ the Grimm that Ruby had been feeling all night _just got worse._

As if the feeling was coming from _the storm itself._

Ruby felt her body clench as she glanced up at the swirling dark clouds that filled the sky, and the gloom that suddenly seemed to be pressing in much _closer_ than before…

They needed to move. _Fast._

Even through the encroaching gloom, Ruby could see Riku standing alone out on the rock. Thankfully, it looked like none of the shadow creatures had gotten up here yet, and Riku looked to be okay just…

Ruby paused.

Wait… something wasn't right. Ruby held herself back. Something about the way Riku was just… standing there. He didn't look like he was _hiding_ or trying to get away from those shadow creatures, or even try to get any kind of cover from the roaring winds or the surf that was starting to break over the rocks.

He was just… _standing there_, staring up at the dark clouds seemingly unaware of the chaos around him. It made Ruby uneasy.

"Riku-!" Kairi started to call out and rush forward before Ruby grabbed her shoulder.

"You might want to hang back for this," Ruby held Kairi back.

"What? Why?!" Kairi whipped around to face Ruby with a look of shock. Their friend was _right there!_

"Not sure yet," Ruby replied, her eyes still watching Riku carefully as she stepped forward ahead of Kairi towards the bridge.

"HEY RIKU! YOU OKAY?!" Ruby called out to the silver-haired boy even as she took a few deliberate steps onto the bridge. She would have gone further if not for a sudden powerful gust of wind rocking both the bridge and herself, forcing Ruby to pause.

Shielding her face with her arm, Ruby managed to keep an eye on Riku. The boy was still, Ruby wasn't sure he'd even heard her for a moment.

Then Riku finally turned around in a manner that was _way too casual_ for their current situation.

"Ruby. Kairi. You're finally here." Riku spoke. Not yelled, _spoke._ Ruby could barely hear his words over the roar of the wind.

"RIKU!" Kairi yelled from the bluff, "ARE YOU OKAY?!"

"I've finally seen beyond this world!" But Riku didn't seem to have even heard her, spreading his arms as he looked up to the sky, "You, Me, Sora! We can finally leave this place behind! Go anywhere we like!"

"RIKU, what are you talking about?! _WE NEED TO GO!_" Ruby yelled louder as the wind howled even more. What the heck was _wrong_ with the kid?! And how was she going to get through to him?

"We'll probably never see our parents again!" Riku kept ranting, "But we have to seize this chance! We might never get one again!"

Okay, new plan. Ruby was just going to _grab_ Riku, and if the kid had a problem with that Ruby would just knock him ou-

"The Door is Opening, Ruby!" Riku yelled again, and Ruby froze at _that_ familiar statement.

_THE DOOR IS OPENING_

"We can't be afraid! I'm not afraid!" Riku continued.

But Ruby wasn't listening. Instead her feet were moving, her aura channeling into her semblance in preparation for a dash. Something about those words… Right now, all of Ruby's instincts were _screaming_ that she needed to _get Riku out of there NOW!_

Though ironically, if Ruby hadn't frozen a moment earlier, she might just have made it.

Ruby was a mental hair's-breadth from dashing to Riku when nearly the entire plateau _exploded_ in a swirling, raging cloud of pure _DARKNESS_.

"RIKU!" Ruby screamed even as she was hit by a veritable _wall_ of wind that sent her _flying_. It was only thanks to years of aerial maneuvering experience combined with a bit of her semblance that Ruby was able dig Crescent Rose's blade into the sand as a break after being flung only a dozen meters or so. Otherwise she might have been sent flying all the way down the beach…

Another scream and a flash of red caught Ruby's attention. With reflexes even _she_ didn't know she had, Ruby's arm shot out and _just_ managed to swipe Kairi out of the air as the younger girl flew by.

"_Gotcha!_" Ruby called out as she gripped Kairi's arm, pulling the other girl safely to the ground.

"You okay?" Ruby asked as she looked Kairi over, loosening her hold on Crescent Rose as she did. Thankfully, while the wind was still howling and buffeting more than ever, the initial blast of… _something_ that sent both girls flying seemed to have passed.

"Y-Yes, I… think so…" Kairi answered shakily, "b-but, _Riku_…" Kairi looked back, her eyes wide with shock, and filling with tears.

"Yeah…" Ruby agreed in a low voice as she also looked back, back to where Riku was just standing…

Consuming the small outcropping of an island where Riku had been was a swirling pitch-black cloud, spinning and raging almost like a tornado. Ruby grit her teeth in frustration at her hesitation, while her experienced eyes focused on the cloud, desperately looking for movement inside, a shape, an outline, _anything._

Suddenly, the whole swirling cloud seemed to… _shift._

And a pair of sickly-yellow points of light appeared within.

Ruby felt a chill run down her spine. Those lights were the same color as the eyes of the shadow creatures. Except these were _a whole lot bigger._

Oh… _shit._

The cloud shifted again… and then began to _stand up._

"Kairi," Ruby spoke, voice low and focused, "_run."_

* * *

AN: Oof. So originally I wanted to cover all of the 'Night of Fate' in this chapter, but then things started to snowball and well, here we are.

As you can see, Ruby's presence has already moved the pieces around to places they weren't originally. Some of you may have even guessed what some of the bigger changes are going to shake out to be.

But don't worry. I've got WAY more curveballs in store :D

Next Time: The World Ends, But the Fight goes on.


	6. Night of Fate, Night of a Hunt (Part 2)

_"They are rage, brutal and without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and Tear, until is it DONE."_

-DOOM

_"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..."_

-Terry Pratchett

* * *

Cold winds howled.

Dark waves crashed against the rocks.

And on a craggy spit of rock at the edge of the Destiny Islands, a great swirling torrent of darkness roared into the night, with shimmering golden eyes peering out into the night.

Across from the crag, a red-hooded Huntress stood her ground, with hardened silver eyes focused on the mass of darkness.

"Kairi. _Run."_

Dimly, Ruby was aware that she'd dropped into that same cold, _hardened, FOCUSED_ tone she may have freaked Sora out with earlier, but right now that _did not matter._

Whatever this _thing_ crawling out of the void was, Ruby _did not_ want Kairi in the crossfire.

"R-Right!" Thankfully, it seemed Kairi was able to keep her cool well enough. Sparing a glance behind her, Ruby could see Kairi running back across the bluff to the shack that led down to the beach. Just before she reach the door, Kairi turned back.

"Be careful!" Kairi yelled out, hands cupped around her mouth.

And though Ruby didn't want to turn and fully take her eyes off the looming threat before them, she did manage to hold out a hand to flash the girl behind her a thumbs-up.

Refocusing her attention towards the great swirling mass of darkness, Ruby carefully watched the shadowy shape stand up, and up, and _up,_ _and UP._

It was _big_. Definitely bigger than any Alpha Beowulf or Ursa Ruby had ever faced.

Though not as big as a Nevermore…

Unlike the smaller, more insectoid creatures, this new monster was much more human-like in shape and proportions, relatively at least. Standing a good 10 meters tall on weirdly disproportionately short and spindly legs, with a massive torso that seemed to make up about half its mass and long, bulky arms that hung down almost to its feet, ending in enormous clawed hands. Its head wasn't so much a _head_ as much as a writhing mass of tendrils coiling together before flaring out in what seemed to be some twisted facsimile of hair. Though by far the weirdest part was that almost half of the things torso was _missing_. From just below the chest going all the way down to where the legs connected was a _hole_, going clean through the thing.

Also, the hole was the shape of a _heart, _of all things.

The writhing mass loomed large, a pair of gleaming, sickly yellow eyes peering down at Ruby.

Ruby glared right back, cycling another round into Crescent Rose's chamber, holding her weapon in a ready stance.

For just a moment, the night was still as Monster and Huntress stared the other down. The Dark giant was still as it seemed to regard Ruby. Perhaps it was confused that this small human wasn't running away in terror?

Then the giant took a step forward.

A massive clawed fist as big as Ruby was raised, cocked back, and thrust down at her, reaching clear across the gap between the crag and the bluff where Ruby was standing.

Ruby felt the twitch of her lips curling into a grin. This thing was definitely big, but it was also _slow_.

The giant fist slammed into the sand with a thunderous BOOM… even as its intended target leapt safely over it. Twisting in midair, Ruby brought Crescent Rose around, hooking her blade behind the monster's wrist even as her feet landed on top of the large fist.

Ruby squeezed the trigger.

And Crescent Rose cleaved the giant hand clean off.

Making a full flip through the air before landing on the sand, Ruby surveyed her handiwork.

The large claw almost instantly melted away into a weird black goo the second it hit the ground. The giant monster raised its arm up, looking at the newly made stump in a way that seemed a lot like _confusion._

Ruby felt a savage grin spread on her face. Whatever this thing was, it didn't seem like it came here expecting an actual _fight_.

Then the giant monster… leaned back? Ruby raised an eyebrow in curiosity as the creature leaned back with its body almost parallel to the ground. What was it doing?

Then the heart-shaped hole in the torso started glowing with a pulsing purple light and Ruby suddenly had a _pretty good idea_ what it was doing.

Ruby barely had enough time to launch herself into the air before the pulsing light burst into a dozen orbs of dark-purple energy, all of them arcing towards her like homing missiles.

Shunting herself further back with a burst of semblance, Ruby was able to bring Crescent Rose about to fire off a round into the closest orb. Ruby was _greatly_ satisfied to find that the shot _did_ have an effect, causing the orb to 'Pop' like a balloon in a dull flash of light. _That_ made things a bit easier.

Riding the recoil of the shot to get a bit more distance, Ruby adjusted her aim midair and squeezed Crescent Rose's trigger four more times. And five more orbs popped in quick succession. She'd even managed to nail two with one shot!

Okay, that was _half_ of the death balls down… and Ruby now had an empty clip… and nowhere _near_ enough time to swap mags.

The purple death balls loomed ever larger.

Whelp. Time for something _way_ more crazy.

With the half-dozen death balls about a _second_ away, Ruby used a burst of semblance to send herself into a spin, making a full 360-degrees slash into the on-coming orbs.

Honestly, Ruby would consider the results of this little maneuver pretty impressive all things considered. After all, she managed to deflect _five shots_ in a single slash!

Of course in the moment, those five shots Ruby managed to catch didn't seem _nearly_ as important as the one she _missed._

Particularly when it exploded in her face.

A brief flash of purple light filled Ruby's vision as she felt something that burned not like intense heat, but more like a frigid cold. Thankfully, Ruby's aura held firm and was able to take the brunt of the strange blast.

It still felt like she'd gotten hit by a truck.

As she was sent flying downward by the blast, Ruby was only barely able to tuck herself into a roll before she hit the sand almost halfway down the beach. Even so, Ruby was almost sure she felt her bones creak and groan as she practically _bounced_ off the sand. At least the bounce allowed Ruby to more easily uncurl herself and land on her feet, driving Crescent Rose into the sand to brace herself.

After _that_, Ruby would have _really_ liked to take a breath.

Unfortunately, the dark shapes at the edges of her vision told her that just wasn't going to happen.

Pivoting on one leg, Ruby sent herself into a spin, twirling Crescent Rose around to cut down the seven or so shadow monsters leaping towards her.

Thankfully, a quick visual sweep of Ruby's immediate area showed no more enemies rushing towards her, giving Ruby a moment to catch her breath and swap a new magazine into Crescent Rose.

Glancing around, Ruby noted there were more of the Shadows gathering, though they weren't immediately charging her. It kinda looked like they were waiting…

Oh.

Ruby spun around to look back over more than half the beach length to the outcrop where the Big Guy who sent her flying was still standing.

Or rather, _crouching._

And in what looked like some twisted parody of human physiology, the massive dark creature _leapt_ into the air.

Nothing about the way the thing moved through the air looked right. It was moving slower than something that big and heavy should, like it was a balloon floating through the air. Yet at the same time it was moving in a clear ballistic arc like something that was as big as a small building should move. It was a twisted combination of contradictory elements that made Ruby's head hurt a little just looking at it.

Then again, whatever substance all these creatures were made of clearly _did not_ obey normal laws of physics, so maybe it wasn't worth worrying about at the moment.

Also they were all trying to kill Ruby at the moment, so it _definitely_ wasn't worth worrying about.

The massive creature slammed down on the beach almost right in front of Ruby, landing on its knees and planting its remaining fist in the sand. Ruby could almost _see_ the shockwaves in the sand rippling out from the impact. She could definitely _feel_ them as the sand pulsed beneath her feet as she braced herself with Crescent Rose. Out of the corner of her eye, Ruby noticed a few of the smaller bug-like shadows sent bouncing into the air.

The monster quickly loomed back up to its full height, regarding Ruby with some alien, unreadable look.

Ruby responded by shooting it in the face.

Ruby felt a distinct sense of satisfaction as the round went _right through_ one of the Big Guy's glowing yellow eyes. Unfortunately it didn't have quite the effect she was looking for. Instead of writhing in pain or gripping its face, the Big Guy simply flinched and stumbled. It was definitely _hurt_, but not nearly as hurt as something shot in the eye generally looked. In fact, the very eye Ruby just shot out flickered back on just a moment later. The more Ruby looked at it, it became clear the 'eye' wasn't so much a physical organ as it was just a point of yellow light floating in this mass of darkness.

Well, so much for pinpoint attacks.

The Big Guy was apparently done waiting and was now rearing back with its remaining giant fist.

Ruby flipped Crescent Rose back. Guess that meant she'd just have to _cut_ this thing down to size!

…Ruby really missed Yang right now.

Even as the Big Guy was just _starting_ to throw its punch, Ruby squeezed Crescent Rose's trigger and dashed forward. Passing well under the incoming punch, Ruby aimed for the monster's left side. Specifically, the thin strip of material running along the giant heart-hole in the thing's stomach. Maybe if she cut that hole open, the whole thing might fall apart?

As the Big Guy's punch caught nothing but air, the Red Huntress struck true, Crescent Rose's blade burying itself in the monster's side.

Though with not quite enough force to cut all the way through. Holding on tight to her weapon, Ruby flipped her whole body around to plant her feet into the monster's side. For a split-second, Ruby was able to get a close look at the creature. Interestingly, the seemingly 'empty' heart-shaped hole wasn't actually 'empty' but rather filled with some invisible mass, given how Ruby could feel Crescent Rose digging into a lot more mass than just the thin strip of material, plus Ruby's foot was _definitely_ finding purchase on what looked like empty space. Also, that 'empty space' was pulsing purple again…

Time to leave.

Squeezing another round off, both Huntress and Weapon were sent flying as Crescent Rose ripped herself clean through the rest of the monster's body. There was a flash of purple light and Ruby briefly felt that same not-quite-burning feeling as she flew free, touching down on the beach and turning to survey her handiwork.

Unlike the shot to the face earlier, this time the Big Guy was _definitely_ hurting. The monster was now clutching its left side in what certainly _looked_ like pain. There was a deep gash through the monster's side, and the seemingly empty space in its stomach now had a glimmering purple line where Crescent Rose had cut through it. Purple lights the same color were blinking and sparking all over the heart-shaped hole.

Ruby's lips curled into a savage grin. _That_ certainly looked like a _weak spot_.

The Big Guy turned around to face its opponent. Its alien expression was still mostly unreadable, but all those tendrils that made up its head were twitching and flailing a _whole lot more_ than they were a minute ago. That definitely looked a lot like _fear_ to Ruby.

Flipping Crescent Rose back, Ruby dashed forward. Time to capitalize on that fear.

But as it often does, it seemed that Fear was leading to Desperation.

Even as Ruby charged, the giant spread its arms wide. And within the heart-shaped hole in its stomach, all the flickering and sparking purple lights rushed to the center, forming a point that was growing in both size and intensity _very quickly_.

Well. _That_ didn't look good.

And with only a moment's warning, the monster fired a giant purple laser from its stomach.

A solid beam of dark purple energy almost a meter wide split the night air, lancing across the beach and out into the water. It was something that could most likely vaporize an unfortunate huntress in one hit.

Unfortunately for the monster, a moment was all the warning Ruby needed.

Just as the purple beam of death was about to reach her, Ruby's entire body seemed to… _flicker_, before she split into three masses flying masses of red petals, arcing around the beam towards her target.

Originally, Ruby meant to cut into the Big Guy's right side just as she'd cut into the left, but now she had a less direct, but more convenient target…

As her petal bursts reformed underneath the laser beam, Ruby shot forward towards the monster's spindly legs. Hooking Crescent Rose's blade around the left leg at the thigh, Ruby's squeezed her trigger…

…and sliced the leg clean off.

The effects were immediate as the Big Guy began to stumble, the laser shutting off as it tried to regain balance. The stump of its leg even started bubbling and writhing, as if it were trying to regrow the appendage.

But Ruby wasn't going to give it the chance to.

Flipping herself up onto Crescent Rose, Ruby fired off another shot to launch herself into the air as she was enveloped in a cloud of petals that immediately began swirling around the monster.

These monsters weren't the _only _ones who could _whip up a_ _storm._

Within moments, Ruby's swirling rose petals had become a raging tornado, her winds buffeting harder than even the storm around them. The creature of darkness, once giant and imposing, was now rendered helpless as countless petals ripped at its viscous skin, and the winds raged hard enough to lift even its massive body clean off the ground. Even many of the smaller insectoid creatures who'd been some distance away were sent flying, with a few unlucky ones _shredded_ by the torrent of petals.

Then just as quickly as the raging cyclone appeared, it suddenly _vanished_. And the great beast of darkness, now over a dozen meters up in the air, began to _fall._

And even higher still, with her crimson cape fluttering in the wind, Ruby Rose pointed her great blade downwards like a glaive.

With a final burst of semblance, Ruby rocketed earthwards like a bolt of lightning, and buried Crescent Rose's blade into the now-purple flickering heart in the monster's stomach.

Then the monster slammed into the ground, burying the blade deeper still.

The dark giant, who once stood tall, great and imposing, now writhed and struggled in pain. Standing atop the fallen body of her foe, Ruby flipped Crescent Rose, still buried in the monster, back into her scythe-mode, and felt her blade rip and tear through what clearly seemed to be the 'heart' of this monster. The heart-shape, once a transparent, invisible mass, now frantically pulsed, flickered and _bled_ purple light as Crescent Rose cut through it like a butcher's blade.

Until Crescent Rose finally returned to her scythe configuration… and the end of her barrel was revealed, pointed right into the gash she'd just made.

The monster tried to move its arm in one last, desperate grasp at the huntress.

Ruby squeezed the trigger.

And Crescent Rose barked as her high-velocity, armor piercing round shredded what was left of the monster's heart.

The great monster's writhing halted. The flickering heart shimmered one last time before blinking out of existence in a small flash of pink and purple light. With that, the monster's body began to crumble, falling apart like so much black dust.

With barely a passing glance to confirm her handiwork, Ruby hopped to the ground, Crescent Rose held casually over her shoulder.

"Anybody else?" Ruby drawled as she glanced about.

It was funny, Ruby didn't normally think she was the kind to carry herself with that kind of… swagger. But then again, she'd just killed a big-ass monster without too much trouble at all, so maybe she'd earned a moment of cockiness.

Though… now that Ruby looked around, it seemed there _wasn't_ anybody else.

Ruby scanned the area again. It actually seemed like the smaller shadow creatures were dispersing. Maybe the big guy had been some kind of controller for the little ones? If that was the case, maybe Ruby should focus on mopping up-

A sudden gust of wind sent a chill down Ruby's spine and through her spirit. The same feeling Ruby remembered when the storm first appeared, only _stronger_.

Just like that, Ruby was back on high alert. Whirling around with Crescent Rose held at the ready, Ruby scanned up and down the beach for any new threats. There were no new monsters, yet Ruby couldn't help the ever more palpable feeling of _DANGER_. Like there was an even greater threat out there that Ruby couldn't see.

As a stronger gust swept down the beach, Ruby felt her eyes drawn upwards. Was it just her, or did the dark storm clouds suddenly seem a lot thicker? And a lot _closer…_

"RUBY!" a familiar voice suddenly called.

Ruby spun around to see Kairi running down the beach towards her. Thankfully with no new monster chasing her.

"Kairi!" Ruby called back as she ran over to meet the younger girl, "You okay?"

"Y-Yeah… I… I'm fine… B-But…" Kairi stammered as she nearly doubled over, clearly out of breath from all the night's running, and jumping, and _flying._

"I… I saw Sora…! He went into… the _cave_! Where all those _things_ came from!" Kairi pointed over to the path leading between the roots of the great tree.

"_What?!"_ Ruby's head whipped around to face Kairi, "But I told him to…" before Ruby even finished speaking, she was spinning around the other way, bringing Crescent Rose up to her shoulder and peering through her sight down the beach to the docks where Sora _should_ have taken one of the rowboats…

…All three rowboats were still there.

"_Son of a B-!"_ Ruby was sure she nearly _bit her lips off_ clamping down so hard. Funny, she'd never thought she'd ever want to use one of the bad words. Guess there was a time and place for anything… Speaking of _time and place._

"Kairi!" Ruby whirled around on the younger girl, "I need you to listen to me _very carefully._" With all credit to Kairi, the younger girl only looked _a little_ frightened at the no-doubt fairly wild-eyed look Ruby was giving her.

"I need you to head for the dock, take one of those boats, and _get out of here."_

Kairi was nodding along intently right up until Ruby made it clear she wanted her to leave.

"Wait… But what about Sora an-?"

"_I will find them!"_ Ruby nearly _screamed_. She was just about to launch into a full-on tirade, but that was when Ruby noticed Kairi's look of what was _definitely_ fear.

Fear of her.

Okay. Dial it back. Dial it _way back._ And so with the same herculean mental focus she used to squash her fears of building-sized monsters, Ruby took a breath and shoved aside the near-complete _panic_ she was feeling for these kids' safety.

"Kairi, _please,_" Ruby began speaking empathically as she kneeled to put a hand on Kairi's shoulder, "I _will_ find Sora and Riku, but I _can't do that_ if I have to protect you too." Honestly, Ruby could _totally_ relate to what Kairi must be feeling right now. Braving a horde of monsters without hesitation to save your friends? That was something Ruby not only _would do_, but _had done before_ on _multiple occasions._

The only problem was that unlike Ruby, Kairi _was not_ a trained monster-slayer.

"Kairi, it's not _just_ Sora and Riku. I have to protect _you too._ And right now the _best way_ for me to do that is to get you somewhere _safe._ And right now that means _off this island._"

Kairi was now glancing aside while chewing on her lip, the logic of Ruby's words warring with that quite illogical _'my friends are in trouble and I NEED TO HELP THEM'_ feeling that Ruby knew all too well.

"Kairi, listen. I found Sora a few minutes before I saved you, and I told him to do the exact same thing." Kairi's eyes widened as she suddenly refocused on Ruby.

"_What?!_ But then why didn't he _leave_? Why did he stay and just put himself in more danger… Oh."

Honestly, even with the encroaching darkness all around, Ruby couldn't help chuckling just a little at the face Kairi was making right now.

"Yeah… Okay," Kairi was now looking away from Ruby while scratching her head awkwardly, her cheeks flush just a little bit, "I see your point."

Ruby couldn't help the smile spreading on her face even if she wanted to.

"Don't worry Kairi, I'll bring them back. I promise." Ruby gave Kairi a comforting pat on the shoulder.

But it seemed the younger girl had one more surprise for Ruby tonight. Because in a flash, Kairi's arms were pulling Ruby into a hug.

"…Promise you'll come back too?" Kairi's voice was small and shaky, the kind of question that touched a distant memory Ruby buried long, long ago…

"I promise." Ruby pulled Kairi in closer with her free arm. Once again, Ruby was amazed by just how much these kids had latched onto her in the short time they'd known her, and her to them.

The two girls held each other for just a moment longer before pulling back, Kairi stepping away and Ruby standing up.

The two shared a smile and a nod of understanding.

Then Kairi bolted down the beach towards the dock, and Ruby dashed up the path towards the great tree.

* * *

Ruby picked her way carefully through the cave, Crescent Rose collapsed into rifle form held at the ready. It was frankly _way_ too cramped in here for her liking, without even room enough to swing Crescent Rose.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before the cave opened up into a larger chamber. The cavern wasn't especially big, about as wide as some of the alleyways Ruby remembered back in Vale and about the same distance in height, with the massive roots of the great tree visible along the walls and ceiling. Ruby had only been down here once with Sora a couple days ago. He'd called it the 'Secret Place', and that he and Kairi were the only ones who knew about it. According to Sora, nobody knew who dug this place out, though it was clear _someone_ dug this place, considering the chamber's other notable feature.

A large wooden door at the opposite end of the cavern.

Ruby made a quick sweep of the chamber. Still no sign of any more shadow monsters, though that same feeling of '_Danger_' that'd been tingling at the edges Ruby's awareness all night was still there. If anything, the feeling was _growing…_

Worse still, there wasn't any sign of Sora in here.

Frustration growing in the back of her mind, Ruby approached the mysterious door.

It was a fairly unassuming thing, a little over two meters tall and curved at the top, made of thick wood paneling with no apparent hinges, knob or keyhole. Last time she was here, Sora told Ruby nobody knew what was on the other side, or even how to open it. Back then, Ruby remembered giving the mysterious door a few experimental knocks and kicks with no response whatsoever. The door seemed well and truly sealed, to the point where Ruby got the feeling it might not lead anywhere and was just set in the wall as a gag by whoever dug this place.

In the present though, Ruby was in no mood for gags. Placing her hand on the wooden panels, Ruby gave the door a hard _push_, hard enough to shove one of Yang's giant subwoofers across a room. The door itself didn't budge, but Ruby could feel the wood _flex_ just a hair. There was _open space_ on the other side…

Ruby nodded to herself, and unfolded Crescent Rose. She knew Sora had come into this cave. There was no sign of him out here. So that left only one place he could have gone…

Time to see how sturdy this door _really_ was.

"_Kai… ri…"_

Ruby's eyes widened at the voice, immediately spinning around to face the voice coming from the other end of the cavern.

"Sora?" Ruby spoke. The shape that was shambling out of the gloom definitely _looked_ like Sora.

"_Kairi…"_ Sora groaned out again.

"Sora? Are you okay?" Ruby asked again as she started walking towards the boy. Something was _definitely_ wrong with him. Sora was shambling like someone who'd gone three days with no sleep, his eyes were clearly glazed over, and Ruby didn't know if it was some trick of the light but Sora's whole body seemed… darker. Like… the color had been drained out of him or something.

As Ruby moved forward, Sora finally seemed to react, his head rising up just a bit.

"_Ru… by…?"_

Sora began to stumble forward. Immediately Ruby rushed forward to catch the boy…

…only for her hands to pass right through him.

And then Sora was gone.

"What…?" Ruby breathed out as her hand felt the empty air, glancing about as she tried to process what just happened. It seemed all that was left of Sora was a few fading points of light.

What _was_ that? That had to have been an illusion or vision, right? That couldn't have actually _been Sora._ Ruby's hands had passed right through him like nothing was there.

And yet… when the image of Sora passed through her, Ruby swore she felt… _something._ Some kind of… resonance in her aura… did that make sense?

Even as Ruby struggled to parse out exactly what she was feeling, the shadows at the edge of her vision shifted…

Ruby was suddenly aware of a _presence_ at her side, a hooded shade stepping out from the gloom.

**THE DOOR IS OPEN**

A hand-shape wreathed of dark shadows touched Ruby's shoulder. A touch filled with-

_Anger… _

_Regret… _

_Envy… _

_Loneliness…_

_Despai-_

A touch was all it got before Ruby _MOVED_.

_Instinct_ and _Will_ exploded into _Action_ as Ruby retaliated, spinning around to face the enemy and bringing her arm up to batter the hand away, while simultaneously bringing Crescent Rose around with her other hand and bending her knees in preparation for a backwards leap.

This _thing_ probably expected to put Ruby down with its touch, to draw out those negative thoughts from her…

Crescent Rose spun and Ruby leapt away from the shadow.

Instead all the dark thoughts had done was _awaken_ something inside Ruby. Instead of all those negative emotions, now all Ruby could think about was _Yang_, _Blake_ and _Weiss_, and how _there was no way in HELL she was giving up on them!_

As Ruby moved backwards, Crescent Rose's blade gleamed, slicing her way through the darkness. The shadow-shape seemed to flinch.

And also, Ruby _knew_ that whatever this _THING_ was… _it needed to fucking DIE!_

Ruby sighted Crescent Rose, her eyes focusing on the hooded shade.

For an instant, the cave was illuminated by a flash.

And the shadow _SCREAMED_.

Ruby wasn't sure what that was about, but she appreciated the thing holding still.

Her finger squeezed the trigger, and Crescent Rose roared her answer, sending an armor-piercing round right into where that thing's head probably was.

Ruby was rewarded with a whoosing, not-quite-squishing sound of _something_ getting perforated, followed by the familiar report of a round impacting rock.

The screaming stopped, and the shadow-shape collapsed, appearing sort of like a hooded figure on their knees.

_wHAt… ArE… yO-_

Ruby squeezed the trigger again.

The shadowy figure recoiled as the round _definitely_ went through its face area as a flash once more illuminated the cave. Ruby twisted a knob, flipping Crescent Rose's blade up into her glaive configuration as she prepared to lunge forward and bury the blade into this thing's chest.

But it seemed like the shadow had had enough. With what was _definitely _a groan of pain, the shape seemed to… melt.

Ruby raised an eyebrow in curiosity as the shadow-shape seemed to melt down into an actual shadow on the ground, before it and the rest of the unnatural darkness in the cave seemed to pull away, drawing into the door at the end of the cave.

The door seemed to shimmer… and pulse…

Ruby's eyes widened. On instinct, she flipped Crescent Rose back into normal mode, leapt backwards, fired a round and activated her semblance all at the same time.

She'd played enough video games to recognize a 'sore-loser screw-you' boss attack.

The door _exploded_ into a wall of pure darkness.

* * *

AN: Why Yes, Ruby DID in fact just shoot Ansem-nort in the face.

Stuff like this is why I love fanfiction XD

SO! This part was in fact originally meant to wrap up the Night of Fate, though I am happy to say that Part 3 WILL wrap things up and more importantly is nearing completion and will be up within the next couple weeks. Posting this piece now has less to do with the whole thing snowballing, and more because I realized I could totally end a chapter with Ruby essentially telling ol' Baldy McWiggilyfingers to Fuck Off and Die.

Of course, Ruby ALSO just basically kicked over the mother of all hornet's nests, and we all know there is LOT worse out there than just one Darkside. If anyone is getting Episode 0.2 vibes, I am happy to say those were very intentional.


	7. Night of Fate, Night of a Hunt (Part 3)

_t__**He**__ Do__**Or **__iS o__**Pe**__n_

_**T**__hE __**dO**__oR __**Is**__**O**__pe__**N**_

_the __**DOOR**__ IS __**OPEN**_

Riding recoil and a tornado of rose petals with darkness nipping at her heels, Ruby flew out of the cave, touching down on the beach. The wind was stronger than ever, whipping up sand and surf so much that Ruby immediately pulled her hood up.

Spinning around to face the cave, Ruby was just in time to see a massive tendril of _pure darkness_ tear its way out of the cave. Like a giant, unending flying serpent the tendril took to the skies, coiling and twisting through the air above the island, little pieces of itself flaking off as it went.

Those 'little pieces' happened to be the same smaller shadow-creatures from earlier. In fact…

Ruby felt herself tense as she looked at the thing closer.

That whole thing was actually one great writing mass of what had to be _thousands_ of those monsters.

Ruby grimaced as she raised Crescent Rose, firing off a string of rounds to take out the smaller monsters falling to her location. Ruby _really_ wished she had Weiss here. Or Nora, or Coco. _Somebody_ with good AoE attacks.

The half-dozen monsters falling directly at Ruby were felled, but hundreds more descended all around her as the writhing demonic tower of darkness circled above the island. All the while, Ruby could feel the wind pick up all around her, kicking up sand and sending the surf along the beach into a roiling torrent. The storm was practically a hurricane now.

As the monsters fell around her, Ruby made her decision.

Ignore the Wave of Darkness for the moment. She needed to find Sora and Riku, meet up with Kairi and get those kids off this island _NOW_. Hopefully without drawing this thing's attention…

That was when Ruby saw the massive tendril, now coiling out into the sky at _least_ several hundred meters, arc back around and come roaring back towards the beach.

Specifically, _Right. At. Her._

Were it any other time, Ruby might have felt a pit of genuine _fear_ drop into her stomach.

Of course at the moment, she didn't exactly have _time_ for that.

Just as the wave of darkness tore into the beach like a runaway freight-train, Ruby was airborne, launching herself upwards with recoil and semblance.

The wave passed safely beneath Ruby, but it clearly wasn't going to be deterred so easily as the tendril turned before it reached the ridge behind the beach, arcing upwards towards its target even as Ruby fired a second and third round to gain more altitude towards the branches of the great tree.

An idea occurred to Ruby. Not a _good_ idea by any estimation, but she didn't exactly have TIME to come up with one of those at the moment.

Using a burst of semblance to shunt herself a little higher and over to the side, Ruby reoriented herself to hit one tree's more solid branches feet-first. Not to _land_ of course, Ruby just needed something to bounce off of.

As the 'Head' of the giant tendril roared up towards her, Ruby's feet hit the branch, allowing her momentum to pull herself into a crouch with Crescent Rose held alongside. And in the split-second before gravity could pull her off the branch, Ruby _pushed_ off with a snap of her legs, a burst of her semblance and a shot from Crescent Rose, rocketing down towards her foe.

But _NOT_ at the oncoming head…

Passing beneath the tendril's head, Ruby angled her body perpendicular to Crescent Rose, flipped her into glaive-form and pulled the trigger. This time, instead of sending them rocketing forward, Huntress and Weapon were sent into a _spin_. Like a giant spinning buzzsaw of death, Ruby rocketed forward towards her _real_ target.

The 'neck' of the tendril where it had started curving upwards.

Ruby held her breath.

For a split second, Ruby felt like she was passing through water, except the water wasn't wet and 'pricked' at her aura like so many tiny needles…

Then she was through.

Burying Crescent Rose's blade in the sand, Ruby perched herself atop her weapon to survey her handiwork.

She'd managed to sever the giant tendril completely. The 'lower' part that led back into the cave was thrashing about like a headless snake, more and more of the small shadow creatures that composed it flaking off. The 'upper' portion that Ruby just severed was outright disintegrating. The dozens of shadows that composed it falling apart.

Except for one piece. Right at the tendril's 'head', there was something that Ruby wasn't able to see earlier, buried beneath a mass of the shadows.

A large orb of unknown material about a meter across, pulsing with a dark-orange light and ringed with tiny black lines. It was descending slowly, like a balloon, and the shadow creatures near it were floating, almost like the orb was pulling the shadows closer to itself with some kind of gravity.

Ruby's lips twisted into a fierce grin. _That_ certainly looked like a big ol' _weak spot_ for this monster.

Wrenching Crescent Rose out of the sand, Ruby bounced off the ground and between a few nearby palms with her semblance to take up a better perch on top of a nearby tree before unloading nearly an entire clip into the tendril's displaced core.

With every hit, the orange core twitched and writhed in what _definitely_ looked like pain.

The ball then seemed to rotate until part of it with more dark lines than the rest was facing Ruby, who couldn't help but feel like she was looking at this thing's face.

So Ruby immediately fired another round into the probably-face.

The orange ball of doom vibrated in what Ruby liked to think was pain and anger. Then it started launching the little shadow creatures at Ruby like a videogame boss with its minions.

Unfortunately for the doom-ball, its projectiles were quite a bit _slower_ than Ruby's. In fact, they were moving _just_ _slow_ enough… and there were _just enough_ of them…

Ruby felt a giddy grin spread across her face.

_I always wanted to try this!_

Before the first shadow-projectile even reached her, Ruby was dashing forward and launching herself into the air and _towards_ the shadow with a burst of semblance. As she reached the creature however, Ruby _did not_ swing Crescent Rose at it.

Instead, Ruby simply planted her boot into the shadow…

…and _bounced off it_ towards the next one in line!

It was _oh so_ considerate of the big doom ball to give Ruby a nice pathway to get up to it.

Bouncing from one shadow-projectile to the next like they were stepping stones in the sky, Ruby was upon her target in seconds, brining Crescent Rose's blade down onto it…

…only for the core to suddenly jinx to the right with surprising speed, leaving Crescent Rose to cut a small line along its side.

Ruby let out a brief 'Eep!' of surprise as she flew past her target, but then training and years of experience took over. Even as Ruby _began_ to plummet down the nearly fifteen meter-drop back to the beach, Ruby repositioned Crescent Rose below herself, standing on her blade with her barrel oriented downwards. At the same time, Ruby was tracking where the core was moving.

And with a squeeze of a trigger and a burst of semblance, the young Huntress was back in pursuit of her quarry.

This thing could levitate, but it couldn't quite _fly_. There definitely seemed to be a limit to how far this thing could float off the ground or some other grounded object like a tree or rock.

Ruby bounced from tree to cliff to rock to tree, chasing the big glowing ball back and forth across the island. All the while, her quarry kept trying to summon more and more Shadows to it, trying pull its giant tendril body back to itself. And every time it tried, Ruby would deny it, slicing through the individual shadows drawn to it and forcing the core to remain on the move.

Back and forth and higher and higher Ruby's prey moved, desperately trying to put enough distance between itself and the huntress on its tail.

But the Huntress would not be deterred.

Moving higher still, the orange orb eventually reached the highest possible point on the island, floating almost ten meters above the very top of the great tree. Perhaps the creature thought itself safe, as the red-clad scythe-wielder seemed to have momentarily given up the chase. The orb remained still for just a few moments, working to pull the Shadows up from the island below and reform its massive tentacle-like body. It would only take a little time…

Then suddenly, the air was _full of petals._

A giant _cloud_ of red rose petals burst forth from the tree below, each petal passing seamlessly between the gaps in the foliage.

A cloud that instantly reformed into a Red-Hooded Reaper.

Riding recoil and semblance once more, Ruby shot skywards. Making one last minute correction to her course, Ruby passed alongside the orange core…

…and buried Crescent Rose's blade deep into her prey.

The creature seemed to _twitch_ and _shiver_, as if the pain it was no doubt feeling was a very _new_ sensation.

Well, it wouldn't be feeling it for much longer as Ruby squeezed Crescent Rose's trigger one final time.

And split the core like an oversized melon.

There was no blood or gore or anything of that sort. Just a dull burst of light as the split halves seemed to just… evaporate after a moment. Along with a distant, echoing sound at the very edges of Ruby's awareness.

Flipping herself around in mid-air, Ruby touched down on top of the great tree, her feet expertly balancing on the uppermost branches.

Well, that hadn't been _too_ difficult. Ruby honestly thought that thing would've been a lot harder…

Another thunderclap drew Ruby's attention upwards. It was an odd-sounding thunderclap too, more of a deep moaning than a splitting cra-

Ruby's thoughts suddenly _halted_ as she looked up, looked closer at the great black mass that was filling the sky. Even as that twitch of _DANGER_ was shivering more than ever…

Those weren't storm clouds.

'_Gods…'_

Ruby had _seen_ huge monsters before. Laid eyes on true _giants_. Nevermores with feathers the size of small _trees_. Goliaths tall enough to make whole forests look like grassy fields. A Wyvern big enough to nearly topple Beacon Tower just by perching on it. And Ruby knew that Grimm got even bigger than that. Leviathans that lived deep in the ocean that could tower over nearly any structure made by human hands.

What Ruby saw now, dwarfed _all_ of those.

This monster wasn't _in_ the storm. It didn't even _create_ the storm.

It _was the storm._

A great typhoon that filled the sky so thick that it blotted out the night itself, stretching for dozens, maybe even _hundreds_ of kilometers in every direction. _All_ of it a swirling, churning, _teeming_ mass of _darkness._ Composed _entirely_ of those shadow monsters.

The great tendril that attacked Ruby must have held hundreds of those creatures.

Up there, there had to be millions, no, _billions_ of those monsters. And how many _thousands_ of those bigger monsters could be up there? And _who knows what else?_

In the distance, Ruby could make out thin dark lines descending from the cloud. All of them reaching down to the ocean and the land of the surrounding islands. It only took a moment for Ruby to guess at what they were: Massive tendril of darkness just like the _one_ she'd just worked so hard to kill. Now there were dozens, no _hundreds_, maybe even _thousands_ of them out there. And _all_ of them looked positively _tiny_ compared to the great mass above. Like comparing the end of the tiniest finger to the rest of the great monster it was attached to.

Suddenly, the wind shifted again, and Ruby looked up to see something far _closer_ to her…

There was a new tendril descending, one bigger than all the rest. And it was coming right at the island. Right at _Ruby_, as if this impossibly huge collective was _singling her out_. It seemed this monster, this _Darkness_ was finally taking an _interest_ in the young huntress that stood against it.

It was like a great serpent of ancient legend said to wrap around the whole world, uncoiling a massive body that had to be at least a hundred meters thick and stretching a few _kilometers_ back and forth before returning to the great storm above.

The front of the great serpent was split into three like some kind of Hydra, each with a 'head' bigger than the _Goliaths_ that Ruby remembered looming over the forests around Vale.

The great serpent descended down towards the island, three separate maws looming wide, each big enough to swallow a Giant Nevermore whole.

It was then that Ruby finally recognized the _feeling_ she'd been having ever since she'd first looked up at this storm. The feeling that was _like_ Grimm, but not quite. The sensation she'd been feeling coming from this Darkness wasn't anger, rage or hatred.

It was _Hunger._

Whereas the Grimm sought to kill and destroy, this Darkness sought only to _Devour_. To _Consume_.

And whereas the Grimm seemed fixated on Humanity, typically leaving wildlife alone, this Darkness had no such preference.

It simply… _Hungered_. For humans, animals, plants, land, ocean… _everything._

A Hunger to _swallow the world._

_That_ was the Monster Ruby now faced.

Ruby took _ALL _this in. The sheer, _impossible_ enormity of the task before her. Her legs began to shake. The weight of Crescent Rose felt so much heavier than normal. All the exhaustion and strain of the night's battles came rushing to the forefront.

_THAT_ was what she was up against. Not a monster, but a _force of nature_. An act of the _GODS._

For the first time in a long while, Ruby felt the cold grip of _fear_ seize her heart and mind.

Ruby was no stranger to fear. She learned long ago how to squash that tingling, twitching anxiety and uncertainty. Yet there was something _more_ to the fear this time. Something _primal_. The thing any _sane_ human feels when faced with a _true_ monster. Something equal parts unknowable and unstoppable. What one feels when they _know_ they are utterly helpless. That there is absolutely _nothing they can do_ against such a monster.

Defeating this thing was… hopeless_._

_..._

_..._

_..._

_And yet…_

As the great heads moved closer, Ruby suddenly felt… _lighter._

If things were truly _hopeless_… If this thing was going to swallow her up either way…

_Then what do I have to lose?_

Suddenly the shaking in Ruby's legs was gone. Suddenly Crescent Rose felt lighter than ever. Suddenly the exhaustion was the furthest thing from Ruby's mind.

Maybe she didn't have a chance… Maybe it _was_ impossible…

Ruby's poise straightened, and settled into her combat stance.

_But Ruby wasn't going to let this thing take her without a FIGHT._

The center head loomed large over the island, its gaping maw poised to swallow the Red Hooded Huntress.

Ruby glared back unflinchingly, eyes shimmering against the gloom.

As the massive jaws began to close, Ruby pointed Crescent Rose downwards, squeezed her trigger…

-Insert Theme: Spiral (Red vs. Blue Season 9 OST)-

…and shot skywards right at the massive jaws.

Dodging away from the initial bite, Ruby managed to hook Crescent Rose onto the serpent's upper jaw, into what might count as an upper 'lip', and planted her feet into a surface comprised entirely of a thousand writhing shadowy forms.

Ruby wasn't thinking about how she might find purchase or traction on such a surface.

Instead, she _just_ _started running._ Running across a flat head-like shape 50 meters long. All the while dragging Crescent Rose through it like a plow through dirt.

Ruby could _feel_ Crescent Rose cutting through dozens of those Shadows as she ran. Ruby didn't know if she was cutting this thing wide open or just giving it the equivalent of a paper cut, but she was determined to _cut this thing_ all the same.

Suddenly, the entire world began to tilt as the great serpent reared upwards and the flat plane Ruby was running on started to become far more vertical.

Of course, this suited Ruby just fine. Now she had _gravity_ to help her run _even faster_ as left the serpent's head and began running down its neck, keeping Crescent Rose buried deep as she ran. Faster and faster Ruby went, the _dozens_ of Shadows she was cutting through becoming _hundreds._ Ruby was tempted to look back to see how much damage she was doing, but she knew there was no time for such things.

Especially once Ruby glanced to her right and saw the left head of this Hydra looming closer with its own maw wide and glancing to her left showed the _other_ head doing the same. It seemed the other two heads wanted a piece of the action too.

Ruby's lips twisted into a savage smirk.

Again, that suited her _just fine._

As the great maws lunged for their target Ruby was suddenly enveloped in petals and shot forwards at five times her previous speed.

The whole world seemed to shake as the two gigantic serpentine heads collided with the center neck and each other. All three effectively disintegrated, the thousands of tiny creatures that comprised flying apart as the great masses smashed together.

And _just ahead_ of this great collapsing mass, a comparatively miniscule burst of red petals sped on.

From within her cloud of petals, Ruby realized something she hadn't quite been expecting: As she flew forwards, even the _petals_ were shredding the Shadows around her, her semblance having effectively turned her into a giant _drill_. As the great tendrils behind her fell apart, Ruby sped on down towards the point where they joined, cutting a swath of shredded Shadows in her wake.

But it seemed the great serpent wasn't done quite yet. The three great necks didn't so much fall apart as simply _split_, going from three massive heads to dozens of smaller ones. And every single one of them doubled back towards the red petal cloud tearing down their body.

Yet they would find her a difficult target.

Ruby jinxed right out of the way of a couple tendrils, then left to avoid three more, then further right again to dodge another pair, then split her petal cloud in three to weave between four tendrils coming down in front of her.

And with a big one coming down right on top of her, Ruby dropped out of her semblance, throwing herself and Crescent Rose into another 'buzzsaw spin'. The front of the tendril was practically shredded the instant it got too close and after barely a moment, Ruby was back in her semblance drilling her way down through this serpent. Now with a killcount that had to be in the _thousands._

The thing was though, Ruby was never all that interested in killing this oversized snake. Right now she had one goal and one goal only: _Kill as many of these Darkness monsters as she could._ As impressive as this giant serpent might be, it was still only a _small_ part of the _real monster._

So even as the great serpent split itself more and more, it's tendrils continuing to double back and strike at its foe, Ruby sped on. On and on, up and up Ruby went, leaving the great serpent behind as she shot into her _real_ target.

Into the Storm itself.

* * *

The interior of the storm was less one solid mass and more a network of passages and caverns. Perhaps so the larger creatures could move about more freely. It was sort of like one ludicrously massive ant colony, only instead of sand or dirt, it was constructed of countless smaller ants.

And all those smaller ants were in _constant motion_.

There was quite literally _no_ solid ground to stand on. There wasn't even a floor, or a ceiling. Just constantly moving and shifting walls and planes of countless Shadows. Ruby was certain that if she ever stood still, ever stopped moving for even a moment, this place would swallow her up immediately.

Of course, staying fast and mobile was what Ruby's particular fighting style was all about. Ruby dashed along the walls, bounced from one floating clump of shadows to another, shot through the air from one plane to the next on Crescent Rose's recoil, or simply drilled through walls with her semblance.

And all the while, the onrush of Darkness continued.

They came at Ruby from all directions. Not as individuals, but as a _flood_. Whether it was more long tendrils of Shadows that struck at Ruby like lunging snakes. Or great _waves_ of Shadows that rushed into the open spaces as if to _drown_ her. There were even more of those _giants_ that loosed unending barrages of those darkballs at Ruby, or just got in close to try and crush her like a bug.

But the Red Hooded Reaper was undeterred.

Ruby ducked and weaved around the serpentine tendrils, slicing through the weakspots she'd discovered earlier and splitting more than a few more of the dark-orange cores.

Ruby _surfed_ the waves of shadows. Riding Crescent Rose like a board, her blade slicing through hundreds of shadows as Ruby propelled them along with bursts of petals. All the while Ruby stayed _just ahead_ of the breaking crests desperate to swallow her up.

As for the giants? Ruby mostly ignored them. Now that she knew what they were about, it wasn't too hard to dodge around those barrages of darkballs, or shoot them down with Crescent Rose or cut them down with pinpoint slashes.

The ones that got in close to try and smash Ruby tended to find Crescent Rose's buried into their hearts.

Yet even with all that, Ruby knew she was fighting on borrowed time.

Sure, with each passing minute she was cutting down dozens, even _hundreds_ of these monsters. By now her killcount had to be in the _thousands_, maybe even _ten thousand_.

But what was even a _hundred_ thousand, in the face in _billions?_ _Trillions?_

No matter how hard she fought, Ruby was still only _one person_. Even assuming she could somehow fight on forever, how long would it even _take_ to put a reasonable dent in this thing?

_Probably 11 days. And that's making some pretty optimistic assumptions, like being able to keep up a thousand kills a minute. And there being ONLY a billion of these things up here,_ spoke a part of Ruby that sounded a lot like Weiss during one of those all-night cram sessions back at Beacon.

No, Ruby had zero illusions about her chances.

There was no actually _beating_ this thing. It was all Ruby could do to simply _hurt_ it.

Perhaps there was some central core to this storm, but how would she even _find_ it? Ruby knew she was effectively lost in this storm, with not a single bearing or landmark to guide her. It was all Ruby could do to tell up from down.

So Ruby simply _stopped thinking about that._

The time for strategy and planning was long passed. All of Ruby's thoughts were now blurring together into a haze of action and instinct.

Now, Ruby was becoming possessed of only a single, solitary objective;

_Fight._

There was no more thought to what might come after as Ruby spun Crescent Rose like a top, shredding a path through a wave of shadows.

_**Fight.**_

There was no more thought of _how long she could keep this up_ as Ruby bounced between five serpentine tendrils in a cloud of petals before ripping the core clean out of a sixth.

_**FIGHT**_

And there was no more thought of what might happen when she was finished as Ruby rammed Crescent Rose clean through a Shadow Giant's heart before emptying an entire clip into the heart of another Giant behind it.

No thought at all.

On and on Ruby pushed through the storm and the Darkness. Further, faster, _higher and higher_…

Until for one brief moment, the Darkness was pealed aside, and the night sky returned.

Somehow, Ruby had fought her way all the way through the whole storm, and shot out the top into the sky above.

Ordinarily, Ruby might wonder just how _high_ she was right now, how many _kilometers_ up she was. Or how she was going to handle the _way back down_ without turning into a rose-colored smear. Or wonder what those large, odd-looking triangle-shapes floating even further up might be.

Instead, Ruby simply let out a breath, and basked in this brief, fleeting moment of _peace_. Where the air was calm save for a gentle wind, the roar in her ears faded to the calm rush of cool air, and the view above was a clear, unclouded tapestry of a million tiny lights reaching across the night sky. It only now just occurred to Ruby, but the night sky here seemed to be filled with even more stars than Remnant's own…

Then Ruby's momentum ran out, and the moment passed.

As the whole world seemed to slow to a crawl, Ruby closed her eyes, took a deep breath of the chilly air, gripped Crescent Rose tight…

…and dove down right back into the storm.

* * *

Ruby didn't know how long she'd been fighting. How long she'd been falling, leaping and flying, slashing and cutting down countless Shadows.

Ruby couldn't remember fighting this hard and this long ever in her life. Fights that Ruby could remember only seemed to last moments or minutes. Even the longer battles that lasted for hours were more a series of smaller fights rather than one long one.

But this fight was nothing but one long, continuous, unending stretch of combat. Where even a moment's pause would almost certainly spell Ruby's doom.

How long had it been since she'd even touched the ground?

Yet there was something… _liberating_ about all this. About giving in to this state where thought and action became one in the same. A state of pure instinct and will.

Every motion was a blur, each action leading straight into another in an unbroken, unending chain. A slash led into a spin which led into stab which led into a leap which led into a shot which led into hook which led into a cleave and on and on and on… forever.

And her enemy had not stayed idle either. More and more the great storm seemed to have _taken notice_ of the intruder that, while small, was perhaps not so insignificant.

The waves of Shadows were becoming larger, stronger, the giants were becoming more numerous and tendrils and towers were becoming larger, more numerous and striking with even greater speed and ferocity.

More and more, the storm seemed intent on _snuffing out_ this intruding presence.

Yet for every step the Darkness took against her, Ruby found herself able to _match it_.

As fast and ferocious as the storm grew, somehow Ruby was moving _even faster._ Instinctively, Ruby knew she'd long since pushed herself, her semblance and Crescent Rose _far_ past their limits. Yet it seemed the very _idea_ of limits was a concept Ruby had now long forgotten.

Now Ruby was only moving faster and faster, fighting harder and harder, spinning, twirling and striking with ever growing ferocity. Ruby's aura and semblance should have been long since broken and overwhelmed, yet somehow they _just kept going_, as if the light of Ruby's soul had become an eternal, inextinguishable flame. The stress on Crescent Rose should have long since broken the weapon apart, yet the scythe held firm, as if imbued with the same unbreakable spirit of her wielder.

Ruby was certain she was somehow swapping out Crescent Rose's magazines without actually using her hands. She wasn't sure _how_, but she was.

Ruby was pretty sure there were points she wasn't so much leaping as she was _floating_, changing directions mid-air with no recoil from Crescent Rose as her cloak fluttered and beat behind her like a pair of wings.

All the while, that cloud of rose petals that always seemed to be a momentary, fleeting presence whenever Ruby used her semblance was now enveloping her in a whirlwind. Whether created by the spinning of Ruby's slashes or her semblance, or perhaps both. Ruby's strikes guided this whirlwind, and this whirlwind guided Ruby's strikes.

The strikes, the petals, the whirlwind, Crescent Rose, the cloak, the huntress, in this moment all these things _were Ruby_, all of them extensions of her spirit and will.

Ruby was now fully focused, not on her enemies, but on the act of fighting itself. Focusing all her awareness, spirit and will. Acting on pure instinct and impulse.

And all the while, Ruby was distantly aware of a heat building within her a spirit, a point at the center of her soul. A heat that was radiating through her body, driving her faster and _faster._

Yang's soul might burn like the fires of the sun. Yet the point at the center of Ruby's soul was not merely burning. This singular flame was _shining_, pulsing like a _singularity_. And radiating a heat like no other.

The destruction of the world, the unending tide of darkness, the sheer impossibility of her task, hesitation, panic, fear itself… all long since burned away to nothing in that flame. Until all Ruby could feel was herself, the enemy before her and the fight.

And even now, Ruby was moving so fast, burning so hot, that even her very perception was burning away as she pushed herself further into a state deeper than instinct itself…

Within this monolithic storm of Darkness, there was now a _new_ storm. A storm of petals and bullets and blades. A raging cyclone contained to a sphere perhaps only a few meters across, yet left naught but destruction in its wake.

The great serpentine tendrils struck out, and were shredded like branches in a wood-chipper. The great waves of shadow tried to smother the cyclone, and were merely split apart. And the great giants of Darkness unlucky enough to be in the cyclone's path simply… _evaporated_.

Ruby was spinning Crescent Rose about and around herself at such speeds as to be almost _blinding_, cutting countless arcs around herself. Her semblance stretched out, an ever-present cloud of petals that now raged around Ruby like a tornado, transforming those petals into razor sharp daggers shredding anything in their path. Even Ruby's red cloak reached out, the cape splitting and stretching into long threads that coiled around her, slashing anything that got to close to ribbons.

The red-hooded huntress had created both an unstoppable offensive onslaught, and an absolute defensive barrier.

On and on it went. A perfect stalemate. An unyielding force of destruction against an unending tide of enemies that could be thrown against her. A storm of Darkness throwing endless waves of monsters against a Huntress who was cutting them down by the thousands at a time without any limit in sight…

Well… _almost_ any limit…

_-CLICK-_

Ruby's hazed eyes suddenly widened as Crescent Rose's trigger was unresponsive. For a reason Ruby recognized immediately.

She was out of ammo.

And that was it.

For just that _one_, fraction of a moment, the storm of blades and petals paused.

But that was all the pause the Darkness needed.

All the opening it needed to swallow Ruby whole.

* * *

All around Ruby, the darkness writhed and pulsed.

All around her…

_Anger… _

_Regret… _

_Envy… _

_Loneliness…_

_Despair…_

_Hopelessness…_

A whirlpool of negativity that seemed to sap any strength she might cling to. Dragging her down to the deep, dark depths that Ruby always fought tooth and nail against. The place she'd always clawed her way out of.

But this time… this time all her strength was gone. The rush of battle that had been keeping her going was broken, her spirit drained away by the onslaught of negativity.

And with nothing to hold it back, Ruby's mind was consumed by Darkness.

She was falling, sinking, _drowning._

What was she even _thinking?_ What did she even hope to achieve?

It was over… She was done…

She'd known from the start this was an impossible task…

What was even the point of it all?

She'd lost so much…

She lost Pyrrha…

She lost _Penny…_

She lost _Yang_ and _Blake…_

And _Weiss…_

Just like she lost Mom…

Maybe it was best to just… fade away…

…

…

…

…

…_no…_

A spark flickered…

…_No…_

A single point in the darkness…

_No…_

Something small…

_No._

Something simple…

_NO…_

Something… _Indomitable_.

_**NO.**_

Mom _never gave up!_

Neither did Penny. Neither did Pyrrha.

"_For it is in passing that we achieve Immortality… Infinite in Distance and Unbound by Death…"_

And she _HADN'T_ lost Yang, Blake or Weiss!

And there was _NO WAY she was giving up!_

_Not on THEM. _

_NOT ON HERSELF!_

Somewhere deep within herself, Ruby felt something pulse in response. Felt something _resonate_.

Before, she thought it was heat coming from deep within her. But now she could see it, feel it, touch it.

_Light._

Outside, Ruby felt the Darkness recoil. This _wasn't_ something it was expecting…

Ruby could feel it. This Light wasn't inside her…

It _WAS _her! And its power was _hers._

The Darkness tried to press in. Tried to _snuff out_ the light that was Ruby with more _pain, loneliness, despair_.

Yet the spark would not, _could not_ be extinguished.

Ruby felt thoughts, _memories_ of friends, _family_, all rushing back. Thoughts of all the people she loved.

And with every thought, every memory, the _light grew stronger._

"_I decided I would be the Hero. And I WILL. I'll turn tragedies into happy endings. That's why I'm here."_

Ruby focused on those thoughts, on those _memories_.

"_It takes time to become a team, but when it clicks, there's nothing like it. And nothing will be able to stop you."_

"_You didn't drag us along. You gave us the courage to follow you."_

Dimly, at the edge of her awareness, Ruby felt something else. Something very similar to the light. It sensed her light. It sensed _her_. And it was being drawn to her.

"_It's okay. I've always got your back, sis."_

"_I want to know more about the world you grew up in, Ruby. And I want us to make that world, as a Team."_

Ruby felt her free hand grip a handle.

"_Just know that I am going to be the best teammate you'll ever have!"_

Silver Eyes opened…

and _SHINED._

* * *

In the depths of the world known as Destiny Islands, there was a space closed off from light and darkness and time. A space meant to house a certain pair of _keys_. A pair of ancient weapons from an ancient war long forgotten.

A space sealed off by powers great and old, meant to remain closed off until the day its contents were needed.

A space that was now… _empty._

* * *

AN: It's kinda funny in hindsight, I really could have jumped right from last chapter's cliffhanger directly into Ruby waking up in Traverse Town. I guess from a certain point of view, this entire chapter is a bit superfluous.

Of course on the flipside, I _really_ wanted to write Ruby truly _cutting loose_ in a fight. Something interesting I've noticed is that we've never seen Ruby truly pushed to her limits in a fight. Whenever she's been outmatched by an opponent, she either has backup or something else intervenes to end the fight. A big part of this chapter was me wanting to explore what happens when Ruby is put in what seems to be a truly desperate, unwinnable fight.

Also, to any Dragon Ball fans out there, yes Ruby did basically go Ultra Instinct towards the end there. Though, not in a 'this is suddenly a DBS crossover' way and more the _concept_ of Ultra Instinct, ie: reaching a kind of 'pure' state of consciousness in a fight where there is truly nothing but the fight itself, hence why I paraphrased Whis's speech. Plus I feel it ties in nicely with what we know about Silver Eyes. I should also clarify that this whole 'being of pure battle instinct' thing was pretty much entirely the product of Ruby being pushed into a corner with nothing left to loose. Ruby's not going to be pulling this off again anytime soon.

Finally, there were a few more little hints I wanted to make sure got dropped in. For one, it's kinda interesting how Ruby's eyes keep activating in response to the Heartless, huh?

Next Time: Traverse Town.


	8. Strangers We Remain

_She's falling again._

_Falling through that endless black void._

_But… something's different this time. The void isn't so empty this time._

_All around, at the very edges of her awareness, she can make out many lights, just like her._

_They're all falling, just like her._

_One in particular looks… familiar somehow._

_She reaches out to the other falling light, trying to grasp it, touch it._

_She's getting closer._

_Closer… Closer…_

_Almost…_

* * *

Ruby's eyes fluttered open as she returned to reality.

The first thing Ruby noticed was _stiffness _in her body, and the hard surface she was… sitting on?

Then a something _barked_ in front of her face.

"Zwei…?"

Ruby's eyes fluttered open to see… not Zwei.

It was a dog, though with her vision still blurry Ruby couldn't really tell anything beyond that they were yellow.

"Hey there…" Ruby tried to speak up, though her voice came out a groggy slur more than anything else. Her vision was focusing enough to make out a pair of big eyes and long, floppy ears.

Then a long, wet, slimy mass slid across her face.

"GAH! Okay, _okay!_ I'm awake!" Ruby sputtered, her mind finally snapping into focus after the tried and true method Zwei used to get her up for school so many years ago.

Shaking the last of the sleep from her eyes, Ruby finally got a good look at the dog who'd awakened her.

He looked like a bloodhound, though lankier than the ones Ruby had seen before, along with a much thinner tale and _much_ bigger eyes. Around his neck was a green, non-descript collar.

"Hey there," Ruby tried again, "what are you doing here…?"

But the dog didn't seem intent on sticking around, as he immediately bounded off down the cobblestone… cobblestone?

Shaking the last the drowsiness from her eyes, Ruby finally managed to get a look at her surroundings.

She was sitting on a narrow, cobblestone street. Across from Ruby was a red-brick wall rising a few meters before becoming a slanted rooftop. The wall was bare, with not a window or door in sight. A cursory turn of the head revealed the same behind Ruby, as well as a few generic wooden crates that she was sitting against.

The street and walls stretched for some distance in both directions. About a dozen meters to Ruby's left the street, or maybe alleyway, ended in a dead-end, with what looked like a long boarded-up door. About the same distance to her right was an opening into what seemed to be a bigger street, the yellow glow of streetlamps pouring in from out there to give a bit of illumination to this dark alley.

And further up, past the bare walls and slanted rooftops, Ruby could make out the dark silhouettes of larger buildings rising higher. It was hard to make out their shapes, but the patchwork of illuminated windows along their faces gave them away. And higher still, Ruby could make out a clear black sheet of night sky high above, dotted with the vague silhouettes and flashing lights of aircraft flying about.

Off in the distance, Ruby's ears could pick up dim, isolated sounds. Someone laughing off in one direction, a motor running in another direction, dogs barking off in a third direction, all the sounds one could recognize from a city at night. A distant, dull rumbling drew Ruby's gaze up again in time to catch the massive, oval-shaped silhouette of some airship as it passed lazily by high above.

Ruby craned her neck back and forth, feeling the familiar 'pops' of loosening stiffness as she tried to get her bearings. How did she get here…?

She could remember the Destiny Islands… There were all those… shadow monsters… She was trying to find Sora, Kairi and Riku…

Ruby remembered leaping at a skyscraper sized mass of those shadow creatures…

But after that, everything was a blurry haze. Ruby could remember that she was _fighting,_ but next to nothing beyond that. And now…

She'd _been_ on the Destiny Islands. Now… she most definitely _wasn't_. Where the hell was she…? Where were Sora, Kairi and Riku? _Were they okay?!_

Ruby let out a long breath.

One thing at a time. _One thing at a time._

Ruby recalled Uncle Qrow's 'List of things to do if you wake up in an unfamiliar place and have no idea how you got there.'

First things: _Am I okay?_ and _Do I still have all my stuff?_

Ruby could feel the comforting shape and weight of Crescent Rose's grip in her right hand.

But… if Crescent Rose was in her right hand… then what was the thing she was currently holding in her left?

Looking down to her left side and raising her hand up, Ruby was met with what had to be the _weirdest looking_… sword… she'd ever seen.

The whole thing was shaped like some kind of giant Key…

Actually, scratch that. It was _literally_ a giant Key that just so happened to have a hilt and guard at one end. The grip was surrounded by a hand-guard of some kind, a five-sided ring of gold-colored metal. In place of a blade was a long cylinder-shaped piece of chrome-colored metal, and at its end was an oversized bit that keys have at their front that actually fits into the lock, with this one creating a three-pointed crown of some kind with its negative space. Hanging behind the key from the back of the grip was a short chain that ended in an emblem of some kind, a silver circle with two smaller circles on its upper left and right points.

And yet as _weird_ as this thing was, Ruby couldn't shake the feeling that she'd somehow _seen_ this giant key/sword before something…

Come to think of it… _Yeah!_ She'd seen this in that weird dream! Right before those monsters attacked! So then… what the _hell_ was this… _thing_ doing in her hand…?

_KEYBLADE_

The unfamiliar word echoed through Ruby's mind. Not like some distant voice, but rather like a distant memory of some half-remembered dream. Like a word Ruby heard once before, but just couldn't remember _where…_

Ruby held the object up before her.

Well… it certainly fit.

Using the familiar form of Crescent Rose in her other hand to brace, Ruby gingerly pushed herself up onto her feet. All the while Ruby could feel a multitude of _pops_ along her legs and back as her body pushed through the _stiffness_ that proved Ruby had been sleeping against that crate for quite a while. A fact that became even clearer when Ruby threw her arms and upper body back and forth a few times in some quick stretches and found those popping just as much.

With that bit of relief out of the way, Ruby set Crescent Rose against one of the crates to better examine her new weapon.

Ruby gave the… Keyblade a few experimental swings. It was well-balanced, and had the weight of your average bastard sword. Which was kind of weird now that Ruby thought about it. With the massive guard around the hilt, there was a quite a bit more material at the base of the Keyblade than in that narrow cylinder that was the 'blade'. Yet despite having maybe half as much material then a sword blade of comparable length, the narrow cylinder was able to easily counterbalance the weight of the grip and guard. Whatever it was made of had to be quite a bit denser than normal metal.

Though by far the _weirdest_ part was how the whole weapon _felt._ Not in Ruby's hand, but rather how it felt… _past_ her hand. As crazy as it sounded, Ruby could feel this thing with her _aura_. It almost felt like the thing was _resonating_ with her aura, the energy of her spirit echoing off of it.

It was like the feeling you got when holding an object infused with a _lot_ of dust. Except _this_ was like someone had made a _whole sword_ out of _pure dust_. Not only that, but the _purest_, most _potent, energetic_ dust imaginable! Hells, this thing was resonating so much power it was almost as if the weapon had an aura of its own! If it weren't for the fact that the aura reverberating back off the weapon was definitely her own, Ruby might've tried _talking_ to the Keyblade!

…Maybe this thing was _magic._ Like, _actual_ magic! The kind from stories long ago that Mom or Yang would read her when she was a kid!

If nothing else, being magic might explain why this Keyblade had a 'blade' with absolutely no cutting edge or point whatsoever. That was the thing about magic Ruby always remembered from the stories.

Magic didn't _need_ to make sense! It just did cool stuff!

Of course, weird, possible magic edgeless key-swords aside, Ruby _did_ also need to check on Crescent Rose. Setting the Keyblade down on the crate, Ruby turned to inspect her.

Except, as soon as her fingers left the grip, there was an odd flash of light at the edge of Ruby's vision.

And then the Keyblade was gone.

Wait, where'd it go?!

Instinctively, Ruby's hand reached out to where the weapon had just been laying…

…and in the same brief flash of light, the key was back in that hand.

Which it immediately fell out of as a _very_ surprised Ruby yelped and fumbled her grip.

Thankfully, the giant key had barely hit the ground before it vanished again, and reappeared back in Ruby's hand. _This_ time, Ruby managed to actually grab the thing.

"Okay…?" Ruby breathed out as she once again held the Keyblade up to get a look at it, her head tilted quizzically as she tried to discern _what the hell just happened?_

Then, in an unbidden bout of pure curiosity, Ruby opened her hand holding the key.

In a brief flash of light and a scattering of sparkles, the weapon was gone.

And then, Ruby closed her hand around a grip that _wasn't there_, yet one that she could recall precisely.

And with the same flash of light, the Keyblade returned for her hand to grasp.

…

Ruby let go again.

The Keyblade disappeared again.

Ruby gripped again.

The Keyblade reappeared again.

_Ungrip._

Disappear.

_Grip._

Reappear.

_Ungrip._

Disappear.

_Grip._

Reappear.

Ruby felt a giant grin spread across her face.

That was _SOO~OO COOO~OOOL!_

She, Ruby Rose, was now the proud owner of a very-definitely-MAGIC KEY SWORD!

_KEYBLADE_

Right, right. _Keyblade_. That was it.

But serious, this was _so cool!_ You didn't get much more capital-M _MAGIC_ than 'sword you can summon to your hand with a thought'!

In a bout of random experimentation, Ruby _focused_ on her other hand, that same feeling of 'holding Keyblade'…

In a flash of light, the Keyblade was now in Ruby's right hand. And with that same bit of _focus_ it then flashed to her left hand again.

Ruby let out a giddy _squee._

_So cool!_

And honestly, this made things a _whole lot_ easier. Freaky aura-resonance or not, there was _no way_ some edgeless bastard sword was going to be replacing Crescent Rose, which raised the question of how exactly Ruby was going to justify lugging this thing around.

But with this whole 'summon-to-hand' gimmick, Ruby didn't have to worry one bit about carrying this thing around. Honestly, it made this 'Keyblade' into a rather nifty sidearm that Ruby could whip out at a moment's notice. Certainly, those times Ruby was separated from Crescent Rose might would have gone quite a bit more easily if she'd had instant access to a bastard sword.

Ruby gave the Keyblade a few more experimental swings, going through a few of the basic stances Uncle Qrow drilled into her head years ago. It was kind of weird just how _natural_ this thing felt in her hands.

Remembering a few moves Uncle Qrow once did with Harbinger in a reverse grip, Ruby flipped the Keyblade around into a reverse grip and gave it a few more practice slashes. Funny enough, it felt just as comfortable in a reverse grip as a regular one. Maybe even a little _more_ comfortable…?

Ruby flipped the blade back around into a normal grip and found that no, it was about an even split between the two.

Frankly, Ruby was ready to chock all this weirdly natural feeling to the whole 'magic' thing. To be honest, despite how _odd_ the thing was, the Keyblade felt more natural in Ruby's hands than any weapon ever had, apart from the scythe of course.

Speaking of which, Ruby dismissed the Keyblade for the moment and held Crescent Rose up, pulling a flashlight from her pack to her a much more thorough one-over.

Ruby carefully swept her scythe up and down with a focused gaze, examining each and every visible piece that Ruby could recount in her sleep. At the same time, Ruby's hands were doing much the same, travelling along the individual screws and connections, feeling for any crack or fracture in the metal.

She was still all in one piece, thank the gods. There was the expecting wearing and scarring that followed any intense and lengthy battle, but no sign of any critical failure points.

It was funny… from the little that Ruby could recall, the fight she'd been in might just have been the longest, most intense fight of her life. Yet the wear and damage Crescent Rose bore right now wasn't really any worse than after other battles Ruby could remember…

Ruby's eyes traveled up the shaft until she could see the barest hint of her reflection in Crescent Rose's blade. Even with her many nicks and scratches, the edge of her blade still shimmered in the gloom of the ally. Almost as if Crescent Rose was holding herself together with the same dogged determination as her wielder.

A soft smile spread across Ruby's face as she pulled Crescent Rose in close, snuggling her scythe like she'd done long ago.

"That's my girl."

Though even as she cradled her, Ruby could still feel that slight, but ever-so-telltale _lightness_ in Crescent Rose.

Popping Crescent Rose's magazine free in a long-practiced motion, Ruby checked to see that indeed, Crescent Rose was out of ammo. Seeing the empty chamber gave Ruby a flash of memory through the blurry haze. Of the sound and feel of a tell-tale _CLICK_ at the height of battle. But if she'd run out of ammo mid-fight then…

Ruby quickly patted herself down, patted her pockets and pouches even her instincts already told her enough.

She was _out of ammo_.

Ruby stopped for a moment to… _process that._ With how vital those high-caliber rounds were to not only direct combat but also her mobility, Ruby always kept _meticulous_ mental track of her ammo consumption during a fight. She'd been carrying _five hundred and sixty seven_ rounds before that night. And apparently Ruby fired _Every. Single. One_ during that fight.

…Wow.

Ruby then immediately patted herself down _again._ That couldn't be it! She _had_ to have some stash hidden away _somewhere._

Nothing.

…This had never happened before.

Ruby started patting herself down a _third time._ Come on! There _had_ to be-

WAIT!

Ruby reached behind herself into the folds of her cloak. There was that _one_ pocket under her hood that she was _always_ forgetting about…

Ruby's fingers touched metal.

_YES!_

Careful it didn't tear her beloved cape in her giddiness, Ruby withdrew her hand to reveal a single, seven-round clip.

"Oh, hello _beautiful_," Ruby cooed as she rubbed the clip of hyper-velocity, armor-piercing bullets against her cheek, relishing the all-too-familiar sheen and smoothness against her skin. Even the incredibly faint, but still notable smell of the fire dust in the cartridges!

ONE! She still had ONE CLIP!

Though, as the moment of jubilation passed, a rather sobering thought became apparent to Ruby.

There was _just_ one clip.

Seven shots.

That was _all she had._

Ruby let out a long breath before carefully, _gently_ sliding the clip into Crescent Rose's waiting magazine.

…Guess she'd have to make those shots count.

* * *

Stepping out of the alleyway and into the street beyond revealed a sight that was unfamiliar to Ruby, and yet couldn't help but conjure memories to the streets of Vale. The buildings and street might look different, made more of brick and wood and cobblestones instead of steel and concrete and asphalt, and the way the buildings were packed close together with some even sitting atop other buildings in layered step-patterns while the street curved back and forth in either direction was totally unlike the way Vale was spread out into organized blocks.

And yet, the sight of illuminated windows in those buildings, the distant, isolated sounds of cars running, dogs barking and a trashcan getting knocked over somewhere, the distant mild warmth of a street lamp that Ruby happened to be standing under… This place might not look like Vale, but it certainly _felt_ like the city Ruby knew. More than enough to conjure memories of nights spent walking those streets, flushing out some stray Grimm that managed to slip past the walls or chase down a hapless criminal.

Or just nights out with her _team…_ Of hanging out in some corner diner with Weiss, Blake and Yang… Those times when they were still _together_…

Ruby quickly clamped down _hard_ on those feelings, even as she felt the moisture begin to gather in her eyes.

There was a _time_ and _place_ for that. And it wasn't when Ruby was in completely unknown territory.

Ruby took a breath. Figure out _where_ she was, find her bearings. _Then…_ then she could think about that… _other stuff._

First… first Ruby needed to_ find somebody to talk to._ Somebody that could tell her where she was. Ruby glanced up and down the empty street. Even if it was the middle of the night, Ruby would have figured at least a _few_ people would still be out. If worse came to worse, she could always start knocking on doors…

Wait! Glancing up the street, Ruby picked out a figure walking along the sidewalk.

"Hey! Excuse me!" Ruby called out as she dashed up the street towards the figure. As she approached, Ruby got a better look at them.

The figure turned to reveal a woman whom Ruby couldn't call anything but _beautiful._ Long, silky black locks of hair framed a face of smooth, fair skin and sharp features with a pair of narrow, chocolate-colored eyes that gave off a focused, intelligent gaze.

Wrapped around the woman's body was a black, loose-fitting robe that looked almost identical to Mistrali-style kimono, inlaid with gold floral patterns along the sleeves and going down the right side.

"Oh?" the woman raised an eyebrow as she regarded Ruby, "What's a pretty girl like you doing out this late?" she spoke in a tone that was clearly high-class, but also had a hint of playfulness to it.

Ruby was left stuttering for a moment. Partly because being called 'pretty' by such a beautiful woman threw Ruby for a bit of a loop, but mostly because Ruby was trying to think of how to phrase her questions without coming off as some kind of crazy person.

"Okay… so I just woke up in that alley back there," Ruby gestured back to the alleyway she just walked out of, "But before that I was on an _island_, and I know that sounds crazy and-"

"Lemme' guess," the woman suddenly raised a finger to Ruby's lips, "there was a really bad storm, then a whole bunch of giant black bug monsters showed up and then the whole world just dropped out from under you. That about right?" the woman flashed Ruby's a knowing smirk.

"Uh… yeah…" replied a gobsmacked Ruby. That… summed up what happened to her fairly _perfectly_. Then the implications of this woman guessing that sunk in. "Wait, you mean you also…"

The woman's knowing look fell into a sad, understanding smile, "Not just me. Basically everyone around here had their world yanked out from under them. And then they ended up here. Welcome to Traverse Town…" the woman trailed off expectantly.

"Ruby."

"Call me M," the woman replied, giving Ruby a kindly pat on the shoulder.

Ruby nodded with a thankful smile. There was something comforting in talking to someone who at least somewhat understood what she was going through at the moment.

Ruby then found herself glancing up to the buildings around and the dark sky above.

"This place… what is it?"

"I don't know that much," M replied, following Ruby's gaze, "The people in the know, scientists, wizards and whatnot, they call this place a 'World Between', a place where pieces of shattered worlds end up. Supposedly, if your world falls to darkness, but your hearts, your spirit, is strong enough to hold you together, then you end up here."

There was a lot in that statement that Ruby was having some trouble parsing out, like the fact that she was pretty sure she'd heard that there were _Wizards_ here. But there was one detail in particular that Ruby _did_ latch onto:

If Ruby somehow found her way to this place, then maybe…

"Hey, have you seen anyone new here besides me?" Ruby spoke up, "Before everything got sucked up, there were three kids with me, two boys and a girls. They're a few years younger than me."

M simply shook her head, "Can't say I have. You'll want to check in with the folks at AVALANCHE though, they usually handle the new arrivals."

"Avalanche, huh?" Ruby asked. Things were sounding more promising if there were people she could actually talk to about maybe locating Sora, Kairi and Riku.

M nodded, "They're set up near the center of town. Just keep following the streets and you'll find it," she gestured in one direction down the street towards what was clearly a greater concentration of buildings, "if you end up at the landing bays with the big tower, you've gone too far."

Ruby nodded back before giving a thankful smile and bow towards the woman, "Got it. Thank you so much!"

M returned the smile and nodded, "Take care of yourself."

Ruby nodded back before turning to run off.

"Oh, and keep an eye on the shadows," M called out, "This world might be shielded, but that doesn't mean those _things_ can't slip in from time to time."

The mention of _those_ gave Ruby pause.

"Those black monsters, do they have a name?" Ruby asked, her face darkening.

"Yeah," M replied with an understanding nod, "we call them-"

"_HEARTLESS!"_ a scream came from down the street. Less than a moment afterwards, the whine of warning klaxons filled the air.

"…that." M finished with a shrug before putting hand on Ruby's shoulder, "Come on, there's a shelter a couple blocks this way."

But Ruby didn't budge. Instead her eyes were focused down the street where the scream came from.

"Sorry, but I can't do that," Ruby shrugged the hand off her shoulder, "I've got a job to do."

The older woman fixed the younger girl a quizzical, yet _knowing_ look, as if she recognized the look in her eye.

"You're a _warrior_…" M raised an eyebrow.

"Ma'am," Ruby turned to M, flashing a grin while patting the folded-up scythe on her back, "I'm a _Huntress_."

And with a burst of petals, Ruby was racing down the street.

Whatever they might be called, there were _monsters_ to be slain.

* * *

AN: And here we go!

Fleshing out and worldbuilding Traverse Town always seems to be a unique challenge. We see and hear so little about the place or how it works in the game, but of course that just leaves all the more room to play around, and drop little world-building hints and clues that will pay off in later chapters XD


	9. Huntresses

Atop a roof, a few Heartless skittered about, searching for a prey.

Little did they know they were already someone else's'.

Suddenly, one of the Heartless exploded.

The rest of the troupe glanced about, seemingly curious as to where there compatriot went. And also what this strange long stick that was in its place was.

The arrow promptly exploded, engulfing the remaining Heartless in a fireball.

A couple rooftops over, a figure in red, yellow and blue watched for any survivors, a second arrow already notched in his bow.

When the smoke cleared, no Heartless remained. Lowering his bow, the archer pushed an unruly lock of hair out of his face with a white-gloved hand, pushing it back into a head of dark, messy hair that was, despite his best efforts, still fairly boyish looking.

Surveying the other rooftops, the archer noted with satisfaction that all the Heartless up here had been cleared.

Of course, that still left the bunch down belo-

"_THUNDARA!"_

And with that clarion call, the night sky was lit up by the flash of lightning arcing from the street below. The following BOOM was so loud, a few nearby windows would likely need replacing tomorrow.

Shaking his head in exasperation, Max Goof made his way over to the ledge to drop down. It seemed his partner had things under control.

"_BLIZZARA! FIRARA BLADE!"_

_Very enthusiastically _under control.

As he dropped to the street below, Max was met with the simultaneous sensations of residual static making some of his hair stand on end, a cold chill across his patches of exposed skin _and_ the smell of freshly charred brimstone.

In the center of the street, amongst a multitude of scorch marks, patches of ice and small craters, holding a purple bejeweled staff in one hand and a sword made of _fire_ in the other stood a young duckling in a pink and blue longcoat.

"You signed your death warrants the moment you challenged me," the girl growled out in a dark, gravelly tone.

"Uh, Webby?" Max ventured with a mildly concerned raised eyebrow.

"Oh, wait _wait!"_ the girl suddenly perked up in an excited tone, "Call me the _Reaper_, 'cause I'm here to collect your _souls_," she then dropped right back into her gravelly growl.

"Webby."

"Oh! OH! And when you get to hell, _tell 'em to_ _make some room_."

"Webby," Max groaned, "they're already dead."

"What?" the girl glanced around, suddenly realized they were alone. "Ah, _phooey!_ I had like, five more one-liners!"

"_Yeah, Max. Why ya gotta harsh on my girl's buzz like that?"_ a teasing feminine voice came from Webby's shadow. A shadow that rather pointedly _did not_ match the girl's silhouette, and also sported a pair of _glowing eyes_.

Max repressed a mild shiver. Yeah, that was _never_ gonna stop being at least a little creepy.

"Ah well, I'll just save 'em for next time," Webby shrugged before pumping her fist in the air, "Now come on! We got more slaughter to monsters nad hits!"

Max stared in confusion before he remembered that his compatriot just cast three decently leveled spells basically all at once…

"Uh, Webby? How much mana did you just burn through?"

"Umm… Applesauce!" Webby replied, addressing the street lamp to Max's left. Then her face began to twitch and her eyes started blinking independently. Then she crumpled to the ground.

"_Ahh crap."_

As Webby fell backwards, Max started to move to catch her. But Webby's shadow was way ahead of him. The purple talisman hanging from Webby's neck flashed as a pair of arms caught her and the shadow solidified into another duckling.

"Hey Pinks, I got ya." The girl cradled Webby gently in her arms.

Shaking his head in a combination of exasperation and bemusement, Max tapped the communicator on his ear.

"CONTROL, this is Goof Troop. We're going to need an extraction."

"Leeeenaaa… your hands are so _strong…_ are you part _bear?_"

"Love you too, Webs."

Max tapped his communicator again.

"And a few boxes of energy bars."

* * *

For Ruby, there was a familiar comfort to dashing down a narrow city street, her petal-enveloped form bouncing between buildings and skimming along the pavement as she rocketed towards some monsters that needed slaying.

Before, things were new, strange, unfamiliar.

But this? This was just another day at the office for Ruby.

Dashing down the street, Ruby darted past other people. All of them running in the opposite direction. A few seemed to notice the red blur rushing past them, but most seemed far more focused on putting as much distance between themselves and wherever they'd just been as possible.

In the distance, Ruby's ear could pick up what _had_ to be weapons-fire, though the sound was less the 'crack-boom' of ballistic firearms and more the 'pew-pew' of energy weapons. None of those sounds were coming from the direction she was headed though, so Ruby just filed that bit of info away for later.

As Ruby homed in on the location of the first scream, the buildings along either side of the street suddenly opened up. Ruby came to a stop to assess the area.

She just entered a large town square, almost a hundred meters on a side and ringed with what looked to be storefronts of various kinds. On three sides, including the one Ruby entered on, the square rose up on raised brick terraces, descending two levels with stairs into the center where there was a white-stone square a good fifty meters across. The fourth side was taken up by a large wall and gate, currently closed.

Probably for very good reason, given that there were over a dozen of those shadow-monsters, _Heartless_, skulking about the square. And in the midst of them was…

Ruby's blood ran cold as she recognized the form of a man on his back, his body _very still_ as the Heartless swarmed around him. One in particular was standing on top of the man with its clawed hand _driving into his chest._

And before Ruby could do anything other than _stare_, the Heartless _tore its hand out_, holding a… Heart. Not a heart like the organ, but a Heart-shaped mass of translucent Pink-Red light. The Heartless clenched its claw around the Heart and seemed to absorb it. The man's body suddenly twitched violently. Then he just… _disappeared_, fading away into a mass of flickering lights.

Ruby stared in shock for just a moment.

Then her eyes _narrowed._

Ruby was no stranger to _death._ She was no stranger to seeing a life just… _snuffed out._ She was no stranger to arriving just a moment _too late_ to save someone.

So it wasn't too long ago that Ruby learned how to _focus_ all the ugly things she felt from seeing a life taken. All the _fear, sadness, anger, guilt _and _self-loathing…_ Ruby had learned how to focus all that into one thing:

Making sure whatever took that life would _never take another._

Yet even as Ruby felt her mind and spirit harden, she suddenly felt a… _ping_ somewhere in her soul. Something _responding_ to her drive and determination.

And in a flash of light, the Keyblade was suddenly in Ruby's hand.

Glancing down, Ruby cocked her head in curiosity at the unexpected appearance of the weapon, as well as the _feeling_ she was now getting from it. It felt like the Keyblade was resonating, not just with her aura, but the very determination Ruby was feeling right now. To stand against this _darkness_ and to _cut these monsters down._

Right now, Ruby could _feel_, understand with absolute certainty…

This was a weapon meant to _kill Heartless._

Ruby felt her lips curl into a smirk.

Well wasn't that _interesting._

Ruby nodded to herself.

Considering that she also really wanted to conserve Crescent Rose's ammunition at the moment, Ruby supposed it was worth… _experimenting_ a bit.

Gripping the Keyblade with both hands in a stance she remembered from Uncle Qrow, Ruby sighted down the Heartless who took the man's life. It was bigger than the others, standing upright while the others were hunched over. Its claws were also bigger, more pronounced with what looked like metal armor over them. Its head was encased in a pair of clam-like pieces of metal in some twisted parody of a helmet. And on its chest was an emblem of some kind; a large black heart, framed in red with what appeared to be stitches crisscrossing it. There was some twisted irony in such a thing.

Of course to Ruby, such an emblem only made for a more convenient _target._

The Heartless began to turn in Ruby's direction, seemingly noticing her presence.

But even as they were turning, Ruby was channeling her aura, readying her semblance, feeling her power _resonate_ with the Keyblade. Ruby _focused_ on her target, took a step forward into the ether…

…and _buried the Keyblade into the monster's chest._

Ruby was fairly certain she'd _never_ crossed that kind of distance with a single petal burst before. But then, righteous fury was a hell of a motivator.

The Heartless's yellow beady eyes seemed to glance downward at the blade in its chest. Ruby wondered if it was _stunned_ at the human girl who just crossed fifty meters in the blink of an eye to right beside to bury a sword in its chest.

Ruby then decided she didn't rightly care, and spun back on her heal, _ripping_ the Keyblade from the Heartless's chest.

For a split second, Ruby could see what looked like a heart made of light or energy rising out of the disintegrating creature. And a split second later, the light was gone and the Heartless was dust.

Still holding the Keyblade firm in a ready stance, Ruby surveyed the dozen Heartless still around her.

They were still for a moment.

Then the monsters charged.

And the Huntress went to work.

* * *

Ruby had to admit, this Keyblade wasn't half bad.

As the first two Heartless were cut down with a wide swing, Ruby was easily able to transfer the momentum into a role that got her out of the center of the melee.

_Ten_

As the remaining Heartless leapt into the space she'd just occupied, Ruby completed her role. Bouncing off of one foot, Ruby made a dash along the side of the group. Keyblade held out, Ruby cut down four more Heartless.

_Six_

The Keyblade might not have Crescent Rose's phenomenal reach, but its smaller size meant that Ruby was able to get a corresponding bump in in mobility. At least over short distances.

Even as the Heartless seemed to be realized what was going on, Ruby made another dash along the group's other side, catching three more Heartless with the Keyblade.

_Three_

The remaining Heartless charged Ruby, apparently unable to realize just how outmatched they were.

_Too bad for them_, Ruby supposed.

Jumping back to avoid the initial lunge, Ruby countered with a lunge of her own and a one-handed diagonal swing with her right hand. The Heartless in the center and the one on her right were cut down.

_One_

Perhaps the remaining Heartless could recognize that Ruby's long swing created an opening on her left, because it quickly leapt at her seemingly undefended side.

Of course, that opening was intentional on Ruby's part. She wanted to try something.

With a flash of light, the Keyblade jumped from a forward-grip in Ruby's right hand, to a reverse-grip in her left. And right through the Heartless's chest.

_Zero._

Ruby flipped the Keyblade back around and raised it up, almost seeing her reflection in the blade.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Then Ruby suddenly felt herself letting out a long breath and nearly doubled as the adrenaline rush began to fade and a wave of exhaustion hit her like a truck.

Taking a number of deep breaths, Ruby managed to steady herself. At least long enough to plant her butt on the nearby stairs.

Dang, this fight was harder than it should have been, and not just because the Keyblade wasn't her main weapon of choice. No… Ruby was starting to feel worn out, _tired…_

…That last fight, that _battle_ on the Destiny Islands had taken a lot more out of Ruby than she'd expected. She could still feel the aches and sores from when she'd woken up. Ruby could tell her aura still wasn't all the way back up to full, plus she hadn't eaten more than an energy bar in… who knows how long. Ruby was fairly confident she could take at least one more fight with these things without much trouble, but after that…

Ruby let out a groan of frustration, leaning back on the stairs as she gazed up into the night sky. Was it too much to ask for a _freakin' BREAK?!_

"They'll keep coming after you." Ruby immediately glanced to her side at the unfamiliar voice.

Stepping out of the shadows and descending the steps into the square was a man. He looked to be in his mid, maybe late twenties. He was tall and lanky in a way that reminded Ruby a little of Uncle Qrow. Cold, blue eyes with a long diagonal scar between them seemed to focus on Ruby behind long, brown locks of hair, with the rest of his hair similarly spilling down his neck.

"Huh?" Ruby tilted her head quizzically as she got to her feet and processed what the man just said, even as she tried to get a better look at him. The man's outfit reminded Ruby of something she'd seen Dad wearing in an old photo; a black leather jacket with a high collar and unzipped in the front, a simple white shirt worn underneath. Below that was a pair of similar leather pants held up by multiple belts, including a pair of brown belts that crossed in an X-pattern. Perhaps the thing that stood out most to Ruby was the silver necklace around the man's neck which held a large emblem, a cross with a lion's head at the top. Ruby could make out the same emblem in red emblazoned on the man's sleeves. Also, the man was carrying what was almost definitely a sword on the back of his waist, though Ruby couldn't get a good look at it from this angle.

"I said they'll come after you out of nowhere," the man continued in a low, gravelly voice as he descended the steps into the center square, "And they'll keep coming after you, the Heartless. So long as you wield the Keyblade," the man pointed to the weapon in Ruby's hand.

_That_ immediately go Ruby's attention. This guy apparently _knew_ what the Keyblade was!

But then the man _kept_ talking.

"Though I can't fathom why it would choose some _kid_ to be its master…"

It might have just been the bout of frustration she was just feeling and the stress of the last few hours, but the way the man called her a _kid_ really struck a nerve in Ruby.

"_Excuse_ me?" Ruby raised an eyebrow even as her voice dropped almost to a growl, "What is _that_ supposed to mean?" Normally Ruby didn't mind being called a 'kid', but then again people normally didn't call her one with that level of condescension.

The man actually had the audacity to _chuckle_ at that.

"It means I can't believe such a legendary weapon would bond itself to some little girl who can barely handle herself against a few heartless," the man drawled while shaking his head.

Ruby left hand was now gripping the Keyblade quite a bit tighter, and her right was unconsciously reaching for Crescent Rose. Oh, this guy was _asking for it!_

"Trust me," this time Ruby _did_ growl, "I can handle myself just fine."

The man chuckled again, gesturing to the square where the Heartless were just standing. "If a scuffle like _that_ was enough to wear you out, then you don't stand a chance against what _else_ is out there, or the people who might come after you. Trust me, _I know._"

Even through the ever-growing frustration at what a grade-A _jerk _this guy was being, something about the man's tone put Ruby on edge. _Was that a Threat?_

"I'm sorry, _who_ are you?" Ruby spoke in a careful, guarded voice. Maybe it was the bad vibes Ruby was getting from this man, or maybe all the recent stress had just left her in a bad mood, but Ruby _did not trust this guy one bit._

"That's not important," the man continued as he began approaching towards Ruby, his hand reaching out towards her, "now let's see that Keyblade…"

Ruby's eyes narrowed. Yeah, this guy was _definitely_ bad news.

"Sorry. Not gonna happen," Ruby growled out as she backed _very_ clear of the man's reach and assumed a defensive stance. One foot in front of the other with the Keyblade raised in a guard, while her right hand was reaching behind, ready to draw Crescent Rose.

The Man stopped, then seemed to almost smile.

"All right," the Man reached to the handle sticking out from behind his waist, pulling out what _almost_ looked like an old, early-style gun-sword. The man assumed a clearly aggressive stance, the gun-sword held out to his side with both hands, looking like he was about to charge.

"Then have it your way."

_So having it 'my' way is you mugging me for that thing I don't want to give you?_ If she wasn't so focused on the ensuing battle, Ruby might have shaken her head and groaned. _Real courteous of you there, Mr. Jerk-face._

Instead, as the square fell into the momentary silence of a stand-off, Ruby remained focused on the enemy in front of her, doing her best to get a read on her opponent.

As she'd noticed earlier, Mr. Jerk-face's weapon bore a striking resemblance to early gun-swords that began to see wide-spread use among the Huntresses and Huntsman of Remnant after the Great War 80 years ago. Essentially it looked to be a large revolver with the barrel replaced with a long, wide blade almost a meter long. Looking closely, Ruby could make out what looked like the gun-barrel running through the blade to poke out just behind the tip.

Curious, but it was hardly anything Ruby's hadn't dealt with before.

The thing that was _really_ giving Ruby pause was her own weapon. Specifically her _new_ weapon. There was no way Ruby was going into a fight with an unknown and dangerous opponent without Crescent Rose, so that left the question of what to do with the Keyblade? Could it even hurt a non-Heartless? It might be best to just dismiss the thing and start moving before Mr. Jerk-face took the initiative…

Unbidden, an idea flashed into Ruby's head, an image of the Keyblade, spinning through the air…

…Yeah, that could work.

Ruby focused on that _resonance_ between her spirit and the weapon in her hand, feeling a bit of her aura flow into the Keyblade. The Man tensed as Ruby suddenly moved, bringing her left hand up across her chest and over her right shoulder. Not a moment later, as she felt the energy begin to crackle along the blade, Ruby whipped her arm out and sent the Keyblade _flying_ towards her opponent.

_Strike Raid_

The Keyblade flew true, spinning faster and faster as it was enveloped in crackling energy, hurtling towards Ruby's foe like a flying buzzsaw.

Though it seemed that said foe was quick on the uptake. Gripping his gun-sword with both hands, the Man brought his weapon across in a mighty swing, catching the Keyblade mid-spin. Following through, the Man continued his swing and successfully batted the attack aside, sending the Keyblade flying off into the air before it flashed away.

_Exactly how Ruby was hoping._

The Man was clearly under the impression that the Keyblade was Ruby's only weapon.

An impression that he was about to _sorely_ regret as he realized that this _kid_ had not only seemingly _teleported_ right in front of him in a burst of rose petals, but that weird red boxy thing on her back was now unfolding into a monstrously huge _scythe._ A scythe that was now going right for his legs.

With the Man's guard completely open after deflecting the Keyblade throw, Ruby was able to get right up close to him with a burst of semblance, her speed transferring into a swing from Crescent Rose that knocked the Man's legs clean out from under him. Even as the Man was _starting_ to tumble through the air, Ruby was following through, bringing Crescent Rose around in a full spin to catch the Man in the stomach with a followup strike that sent him _flying._

Ordinarily, Ruby would have worked at least one recoil-boosting shot into that combo, but right now she was conserving as many shots as she could. Meaning that she _wasn't_ able to send the Man flying clean across the square with that last hit. She did managed to throw him a good ten meters though, plus five more from the tumbling he took, so Ruby was satisfied with that.

Ruby was even _more_ satisfied with the utterly _flabbergasted_ look on the Man's face as he pulled himself to his feet and still seemed to be _processing_ what just happened, nearly gawking at the sight of Crescent Rose's massive form now resting on Ruby's shoulder.

"How's that for a _kid?"_ Ruby flashed a savage grin.

The Man seemed to quickly wipe the gawking look off his face as he got to his feet. "What the hell is some kid doing with a freak weapon like that?" he muttered.

_Ohhhh,_ this guy was _asking for it!_ NOBODY called her Crescent Rose a _freak!_

But Ruby's indignant rage would have to wait as the Man suddenly pointed his gun-sword at her. Ruby was suddenly struck by the memory of a different kind of jerk wearing a silly looking bowler hat as the Man pulled the trigger and shot a _giant fireball_ at her.

Acting on pure instinct, Ruby flipped Crescent Rose pointing down and fired a shot, launching herself _just_ high enough to pass over the fireball and only _feel_ the blistering heat.

_Six shots left._

Combining the last of the recoil force with a burst of semblance, Ruby sent herself flying down towards the man in an overhead spin.

The Man only _just_ managed to side-step an impact that sent cobblestones flying.

Flipping Crescent Rose to the side, Ruby _almost_ squeezed her trigger to fire off a shot that _would_ _have_ sent them whirling around to clothesline the Man.

_Six shots._

Instead Ruby lashed out with a swing to the Man's side, aiming to knock him off his feet. A swing the Man was able to batter aside with his gun-sword.

Even as the Man knocked her blow aside and made a strike of his own, Ruby was able to transfer that momentum into a twirl that brought Crescent Rose's back-end swinging back around to batter aside _his_ incoming swing.

This pattern continued through several exchanges; a long, unbroken chain of Attack and Counter-Attack. One side would attack, the other would block and counterattack, only to find themself countered in return. The length and reach of Crescent Rose allowed Ruby to attack with one end and then defend with the other end in quick succession. On the reverse, the Man's shorter blade allowed him to be more nimble and faster over short distances, attacking and countering just as quickly as Ruby could. Yet even though Ruby _knew_ she was faster than this guy was moving…

…Ruby could feel it. It was only a little bit, but she'd gotten _slower_.

The fight was becoming a stalemate, and the longer it dragged on, the slower she would get. Ruby needed an edge, _now._

Ordinarily, Ruby would just fire off a round to give Crescent Rose a recoil boost, but did she _really_ want to burn her sixth-to-last shot like that…?

Suddenly, Ruby realized that her counter was coming up just a bit _too slow_ to catch an incoming strike.

_She'd gotten distracted!_

Just as the blade made contact with her shoulder, Ruby's form exploded into a cloud of rose petals, dashing backwards and upwards until Ruby deposited herself on next terrace up. Even so, she could feel her aura flickering where the blade clipped her.

Acting on pure instinct, Ruby brought Crescent Rose up to her shoulder, sighted down her opponent and pulled her trigger.

_Five_

But the Man was just a bit quicker, bringing his blade up just in time to block the incoming round.

Ruby groaned. For a complete and utter jerkface, this guy was pretty good. And more importantly, he was clearly _fresh._ He'd probably gotten a half-decent night of sleep and a meal today. He probably _wasn't_ operating with less than one clip of ammo. He probably _hadn't_ just come off of a small _war_ against a Heartless that _ate worlds!_

Right now, Ruby was all of those things and more. The exhaustion, the lack of ammo, the compounding stress over a _whole bunch of things_… all of it was adding up fast.

Ruby needed to end this fight. She needed to end it _soon._

But _how?_ Ruby's resources were dwindling, and with them, so were her options.

That was when the Man shot another fireball at her.

And thanks to her Ruby's ever-more frazzled mental state, she was just a hair's-breadth too slow on her evasion dash.

Sent flying half by her semblance, half by the force of the explosion, Ruby could feel the searing heat of the flames as they charred her cloak and took a sizable chunk out of her remaining aura. The hard landing she took into the center of the square didn't help either.

Scrambling to her feet, Ruby desperately tried to clear her head and _focus!_ She finally looked up to find the Man right on top of her, his weapon raised for an over-head strike.

Ruby tensed up in preparation for what was almost certainly to be a _very_ painful hit.

The Man's gun-sword fell…

…and bounced right off a glowing, double-snowflake glyph. A _very familiar double-snowflake glyph!_

The man looked momentarily confused, then leapt backwards a few meters just in time to dodge a trio of incoming fireballs.

For her part, Ruby's heart was in her throat. She didn't want to hope, even as Ruby felt herself _hoping against hope_…

Then a pair familiar high heel-ed feet touched down next to her.

"Hands off _my_ _partner!"_ Deep, glimmering, _beautiful _blue eyes leveled an _icy _glare. Long, _soft_, snow-white hair done up in a long pony-tail waved majestically behind her. A small, pale, yet _strong_ hand held a long, elegant, white-silver rapier in an immaculately practiced grip.

Weiss Schnee growled out her warning, her long rapier Myrtenaster drawn and leveled.

And Ruby's heart just about burst in sheer, unadulterated joy.

"_Weiss…!"_ Ruby nearly choked as the edges of her eyes were already beginning to water.

"Hey Ruby," as she looked over to her partner, Weiss's face turned from an intense glare to a smile so soft it made Ruby's heart melt.

If they weren't in the middle of a fight right now, Ruby would have pulled Weiss into the biggest, tightest hug she could.

Suddenly, all of the exhaustion, the stress, the doubt, the uncertainty, all the things clouding Ruby's mind… all of it was _GONE!_ Swept away like dust in a cool winter breeze.

Because _Weiss was here._

Standing up, Ruby noticed Weiss changed her outfit from last they saw each other. A simple, yet still elegant blue-grey gown and skirt tied together with a white sash, completed with a bright _red_ scarf around her neck. It was different, yet unmistakably, one-hundred percent _Weiss._

"Weiss, I…" Ruby began to speak up, a thousand different things she wanted to say all piling up, even as she felt a smile splitting her face. The biggest, brightest smile she could remember making in a long time.

"Thank me later." Weiss answered with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, and that _achingly soft_ smile still on her lips.

"So who's this reprobate?" Weiss asked as she turned back towards the Man, her face twisting back into an icy glare. For his part, the Man still seemed to be processing what just happened.

"No idea," Ruby replied as she leveled her own glare at the man, "He wanted me to hand over this weird sword I found and when I said No, this jerk attacked me!"

"Did he now?" Weiss answered back, her glare seeming to drop even _colder._

"Wait," the Man suddenly spoke up, raising a hand towards Weiss, "this fight doesn't concern you. I'm only trying to test the Key-"

"_EXCUSE ME? _This _doesn't concern me?!"_ Weiss's glare had gone from 'icy' to downright _murderous._ "You are _attacking my partner!_ That _concerns me_ quite a bit!"

"And he called Crescent Rose a _FREAK!_" Ruby threw in with a glare of her own, still feeling pretty miffed about that comment.

The Man actually took a step back, now looking fairly uneasy at the whole situation.

Weiss took a breath to compose herself after her outburst.

"Well then, I'd say such behavior warrants a _thorough _ass-kicking, wouldn't you agree?" Weiss flashed Ruby a savage grin.

"_Hell yeah."_ a grin which Ruby eagerly returned, dropping into a familiar ready-stance with Crescent Rose.

The Man was now looking _very_ uneasy at the savage grins being leveled his way. He seemed to steel himself pretty quickly though and brought his gun-sword up in a ready-stance.

"It'll take more than a couple of kids to get me to back down," he spoke in a gravelly tone that was probably meant to be intimidating, but came off as more condescending, and by extension, made Ruby all the more eager to give him a beatdown.

"What's the call, Ruby?" Weiss's voice dropped to just above a whisper, speaking at a level only Ruby could hear.

"Lily Flakes," Ruby replied in the same tone.

And just like that, they were back in the groove. They were a _team_ again.

In a single, perfectly synchronized motion, Ruby drove Crescent Rose onto the ground, using her as a pole-vault to push her body up and parallel to the ground, while Weiss made simultaneous twirl of her fingers to summon a white glyph for Ruby to plant her feet into.

And with a clinch of her fingers and a wave of her rapier, Weiss's glyph turned red and shot Ruby at their opponent like she was a cannonball.

With a comical widening of the eyes that conveyed just how much he _did not_ see that coming, the Man brought up his sword in a block even as he tried to move out of the way.

To his credit, he _was_ able to dodge the incoming Ruby.

The outstretched Crescent Rose? Not so much.

It was only thanks to the Man's block with his sword that he didn't take the _full_ brunt of Crescent Rose's blunt end to the face. It just sent the Man reeling like he'd just gotten clubbed with a baseball bat and nearly wrenched his weapon clean out of his grip.

Reeling from the hit, the Man whirled around to face where Ruby just touched down, redoubled his grip on his sword as he moved to attack Ruby while she had her back to him…

…and _immediately_ took a fireball to the back, courtesy of Weiss.

Sent flying forward by the explosion, the Man had only just enough time to register that he was flying towards the red-hooded girl before Ruby brought Crescent Rose around and slammed her blunt end into the Man's stomach.

And with a squeeze of her trigger, Ruby sent the Man flying back the way he came with a recoil-boosted swing.

Flying clean across the square, the man landed in a tumbling heap, only coming to a stop when he hit the brick wall.

Dizzily, the Man scrambled to his feet, trying to regain his bearings.

"So… you had enough yet?" with Crescent Rose resting casually on her shoulder and her head cocked to the side, Ruby's cheery smile had a smugness matched only by the dark grin Weiss was wearing next to her.

"Or should we keep having this _my_ _way_?"

The Man looked shocked for a moment.

Then he glowered harder than ever.

"I'm _not backing down."_

Now quite little backed up against a wall, the Man raised his sword high, spinning the revolver section quickly in clear desperation. He then squeezed the trigger and a gout of flame roared forth from the blade.

"_Ice Flower!"_

A flame that was promptly extinguished as the crack of a gunshot split the air, and the blade, as well as the Man's hand and forearm was suddenly _encased in ice._

With a look of true shock, the Man turned to see Ruby down on a knee, Crescent Rose held up to her shoulder as she sighted down the scope. Weiss stood tall at her partner's side, Myrtenaster likewise held at Crescent Rose's side as several snowflake-glyphs wrapped around the sniper-scythe's barrel.

In perfect tandem, the two huntresses squeezed their triggers again. Crescent Rose fired a bullet that was almost instantly enveloped in a shroud of ice and cold that left a halo of white, duty flakes that trailed behind the shot.

When the bullet impacted the Man's left arm it did not penetrate, but rather exploded into a cloud of white dust that _instantly_ froze sold, encasing his arm in a block of ice. The recoil also knocked him back a few steps to the wall.

Ruby and Weiss squeezed off _another_ ice-round. This one hit the Man square in the chest, the resulting burst of ice-dust leaving his entire torso frozen, and also stuck firmly the wall behind him.

Ruby sighted Crescent Rose a little lower as Weiss's glyphs re-cycled, preparing to fire a round that would leave mister Jerk-face in a fairly solid block of ice.

Ruby's finger squee-

"_WAIT!"_

Ruby and Weiss simultaneously went on alert as an oversized throwing star embedded itself into the ground between them and their target. This was immediately followed by a figure, a girl about their age with short black hair touching down from above in front of it.

Ruby's trigger finger twitched. Was she a friend of Mr. Jerkface?

The girl then immediately brought her hands together like someone begging forgiveness.

"We are so _so SO SORRY for all this!"_

Ruby and Weiss both raised an eyebrow.

That… wasn't quite what either was expecting.

"Uh…" Weiss raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"…What?" Ruby cocked her head to one side as she lowered Crescent Rose.

The girl let out a sigh of relief at seeing Ruby lowering her weapon.

"So, uh… Hi? My name's Yuffie," the girl waved with a _supremely_ awkward smile, "Are you two okay? We're with AVALANCHE, and again, we are so, so, _so, so, SO SORRY_ about what just happened!"

AVALANCHE… that was the name M mentioned.

"Wait… _you're_ the ones who're supposed help new people around here?" Ruby asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow.

"Yeah…" the girl, Yuffie, replied, scratching her head awkwardly, clearly aware how very _NOT_ helpful they might seem at the moment.

"So do you people _normally_ attack new arrivals in the streets?" Weiss asked, even _more_ incredulous.

"I promise you, we _do not_, and on that note," Yuffie turned towards the still-frozen jerkface, "Leon, _what the hell were you thinking?!"_

Mr. Jerkface, Leon apparently, turned his head away, seemingly _trying_ to look aloof while frozen to a wall and clearly in quite a bit of pain, "The red one has the Keyblade."

Yuffie immediately whirled back around to look at Ruby, her eyes wide in clear shock.

"Seriously?! She's got the…" Yuffie trailed off before her face went from 'shocked' to 'shocked and enraged' as she whirled back around _again_ to face Leon.

"_Then why the FUCK did you attack her?!"_

"I needed to test her ability."

"What kind of answer is that?!"

As Yuffie continued to yell and gesticulate wildly, Ruby was still trying to process what exactly was going on when she and Weiss were suddenly bathed in a flash of green light.

Both Ruby and Weiss were instantly on alert for an attack, but no explosion or pain accompanied the light. Quite the opposite actually, Ruby somehow felt _better_ as the all the aches and bruises she'd accumulated recently were suddenly replaced by a soothing warmth.

"There you go. Feeling better now?" came a new voice.

Ruby and Weiss whirled around to a woman with green eyes and long brown hair wearing a red and pink dress, along with a bright, cheerful smile with just a hint of mischief to it.

"Uh… yeah, actually…" Ruby patted herself down as the green light and warmth faded, but the aches and pains didn't return.

"…What was that…?" Weiss muttered aloud as she patted herself down even more. Being the resident Dust expert of the pair, Weiss was probably even more confused with what just happened.

The woman seemed to take their confusion in stride as she extended a hand.

"Name's Aerith. And sorry about my friend over there. He can be a bit of a handful."

"…Ruby," Ruby tentatively shook the offered hand, still not _entirely_ sure what was going on, "is he always that much of a total jerkface?"

The woman, Aerith, actually giggled.

"Oh, I _like_ that one. But no, he's usually fine. He's just been pretty grumpy these past couple days," Aerith's voice then dropped a bit, "And he'll never admit it, but I can tell you he's _super_ jealous that you have the Keyblade," Aerith continued in a conspiratorial whisper with a mischievous grin.

Oh, _another_ person who seemingly knew what the hell this 'Keyblade' was supposed to be. Ruby made a note to start asking questions when she had a minute.

"Is he going to be a _problem?_" Weiss spoke up, arms crossed as she cast a suspicious glance over to where the other girl, Yuffie, seemed to have just pulled Leon free of the ice. Yuffie was still chewing Leon out, while Leon seemed to be doing his best to look aloof and disinterested while clearly banged up quite a bit from the beating he'd just received.

Clearly, Weiss was not taking any potential threat to Ruby lightly.

"Oh, don't you worry," Aerith flashed a reassuring smile, "he won't be troubling you again," Aerith continued as she walked over to her two friends.

"After all, Squall here is _very_ sorry for attacking you two, aren't you Squall?" Aerith, turned to the now-freed Leon, giving the man a pat on the shoulder with that same bright, cheerful smile.

Leon, or Squall, simply turned away with a _very_ aloof grumble, "I _told_ you not to call me that."

However, he wasn't aloof for very long, as Aerith proceeded to _bury her elbow in his stomach_, causing Leon/Squall to double over in pain.

"I said, _You're very sorry for attacking these two,_ _**aren't you Squall**__?"_ Aerith repeated, the same _bright_, _cheery_ _smile_ still on her face even as Leon/Squall was practically coughing up a lung.

Ruby decided that she liked Aerith.

"Y-Yea-h!" the man sputtered out between breaths, "Real… real sorry… won't happen again…"

"I thought so," Aerith gave Leon a pat on the back before turning to the other girl, Yuffie, who looked like she was trying _very_ hard not to laugh, "Yuffie, why don't you call us a ride? I think our new friends here could use some rest and a hot meal."

"Right! On it," Yuffie immediately perked up at that before turning to Ruby and Weiss, "Hey, just sit tight you two, we'll have a dropship over here in just a minute!" the girl flashed Ruby and Weiss a big smile and a thumbs-up before tapping a communicator in her ear and speaking to a 'Control' about a 'pickup'. At the same time, Aerith looked to be tending to Leon, though notably _not_ using whatever green glowey power she used on Ruby and Weiss.

And with any sense of danger well and truly passed, Ruby _finally_ had a chance to take an exhausted breath. At almost the same time, she heard Weiss doing the exact same next to her.

_Weiss…_

Now that they were no longer in the middle of a fight, there was one thing Ruby wanted, _needed_ to do.

Though the funny thing was, it seemed Weiss was thinking the _exact same thing_.

Just as Ruby was turning to Weiss and dropping Crescent Rose, Weiss was turning to Ruby and dropping Myrtenaster.

The two pulled each other into a hug so fast and so tight they nearly knocked the wind out of each other. Not that either of them cared one bit.

"I missed you so much!" Weiss blurted out, clinging tight to Ruby, burying her face in her partner's hair.

"I missed you so much!" Ruby blurted out at the same time, holding on to Weiss just as tightly.

Ruby paused for a moment, then started giggling as she realized they both said the same thing. She could also Weiss giggling too, a sound that Ruby couldn't believe how much she missed hearing…

As their giggling passed, both girls pulled back just a bit to get a better look at each other.

Still holding tight onto each other, faces held so close they were almost touching, Ruby could only stare into those _beautiful_ icy-blue eyes, and at that achingly _soft_ smile.

In fact, this might be the _happiest_ Ruby had ever seen Weiss. And that made Ruby even happier too…

But now that the rush of battle was over and they were so close, Ruby could also see the bags under Weiss's eyes, bruising and grime on her face, all the signs that she'd been fighting for a while even before this one.

"Weiss, are you okay? Are you hurt?!" Ruby blurted out.

"No, no, I'm fine," Weiss answered with a shake of the head, "What about you?"

"Who cares?!" Ruby replied. What did it matter if _she_ was hurt? What mattered was that Weiss-

"_I do_, you _dolt!"_ Weiss shot back, in a mix of incredulous and bemusement and _something else_ Ruby couldn't quite place…

Just hearing Weiss call her _that_, the first time Ruby heard _that word_ in _that voice_ in _so long…_

It was too much.

Ruby began to laugh, even as her vision became blurry from water in her eyes. She could hear Weiss letting out choked laughter of her own.

Over last better part of a year, each girl had put up countless walls around her heart. To keep herself safe. To keep herself _sane_. To just _hold herself together_.

And now those walls were finally crumbling down.

Laughing and crying in equal measure, Ruby and Weiss held each other close, so close their foreheads pressed together.

For _so long_, Ruby could remember fighting to just _hold herself together_, because there were people who _needed her._ Even as she kept _moving_, each new place more _alien_ and unfamiliar than the last, doubt and uncertainty weighing heavier and heavier all the time…

But now, for the first time in what felt like _forever_, Ruby felt… _safe._ Felt like she was _right where she wanted to be._

It felt like…

_Home._

She was _Home._

* * *

AN: Well. Would you look at that? Seems I… accidentally turned the heat on this White Rose slow-burn from a simmer to a super-broil. Oh well :D

For something that was originally supposed to just be the second half of the last chapter, this was surprisingly tricky to write. Leon in particular was… interesting. Sure, in later games he's super nice and helpful, but after replaying KH1 has anyone else noticed that Leon is kind of a d*ck when you first meet him? I mean Sora has just lost his home and everyone he knows and loves, has woken up in this totally new world, and then Leon just walks up and attacks this 14-year-old kid basically out of nowhere. Plus I've always wanted to see one of those 'I must test the chosen one by randomly beating the crap out of them' situations backfire horribly, so I think it all worked out pretty well.

On the other hand, after playing FF7 Remake, 'Savage' Aerith is SUPER fun to write :D Sadly I was unable to come up with a reason she'd be holding a chair in this scene. Oh well. There's always later.

Plus, we get finally get to meet our story's Disney Companions, AKA Ducktales 2017 is amazing and I need it in all future KH games.

Then of course, there's that White Rose reunion that I have been waiting to write literally ever since I started this story. Both Ruby and Weiss have been through a lot of shit both in this story and before, so its about time they got an unabashed win. I think the hardest part about writing that scene is that I'm pretty sure the She-Ra finale may have left the shipping part of my brain with a few crossed wires. I feel like I kept having to remind myself that Catradora is analogous to BUMBLEBY, not White Rose.

And for those wondering what the 'H' happened to Sora, what happened to Kairi and what happened to Riku, I can promise next chapter will answer… one of those questions. Also I MIGHT be going a little nuts on some world-building.


	10. Interlude K - Not So Far Away

_She's running._

_Running from the shadows nipping at her heals._

_Running from the darkness creeping in from all directions._

_But more than anything, she's running after THEM. She can just make out their shapes in the gloom._

"_RIKU!"_

"_SORA!"_

"_RUBY!"_

_Yet as much as she calls out, none seem to hear._

_One by one, the figures are swallowed up, fade away or blink out of existence._

_And just like that, she's alone._

_She's all alone._

_Again._

_But then she sees something…_

_Off in the distance… a barest glimmer…_

_She's running again. Charging forward._

_Desperately grasping for that spark…_

_Then the ground falls out from under her._

_She falls._

_Yet even as the world falls apart around her once again, she reaches out…_

…_and the spark is in her hand._

**Don't worry.**

_She falls._

_Falls…_

_Falls…_

_Falls…_

**The Light will always be with you.**

* * *

Blue eyes fluttered, slowly opening.

Ever so slowly, Kairi felt the world return.

Except… it wasn't a world she knew…

She was lying in an unfamiliar bed. After a moment, Kairi realized her clothes were gone, replaced with what felt like a robe or smock of some kind.

The bed she was in was a bright white, and as she began to look around, Kairi could see the room was an odd mix of white, grey and metal, with lots of weird looking machines lining the walls.

It kind of reminded Kairi of the time she'd been to a hospital. Was… was that what this place was?

"Ah. You are awake."

Kairi nearly jumped at the sudden strange voice coming from her left. Then she looked to her left and _did_ jump.

"Please remain calm. You are not in any danger," spoke what Kairi could only describe as a _ROBOT._

The whole thing was a dark, metallic grey with a domed head that looked vaguely skull-shaped and a pair of eyes that were each a trio of yellow dots in a triangle. Coming out of some boxy-looking mask where its nose and mouth should be was a long flexible tube that went down into the large metal plate that made up its chest. The thing had a lot of tubes in fact. Most were coming out of the sides of its body to connect with the arms. The left arm looked like a pair of metal pipes connected by a hinge of an elbow that ended in a clawed hand which might have been threatening had it not instantly reminded Kairi of a grabber toy Sora got her for a birthday once. The right arm was much the same, except instead of a hand it had something _much_ more unsettling to Kairi: In the place of a hand was a device that held a large _needle_, almost _exactly_ like the ones that gave her shots at the hospital!

Of course, that thought only served to remind Kairi that she _didn't actually know where she was._

"E-Excuse me," Kairi spoke up, doing her best to fight off the sheer confusion and growing _fear_ of what was going on, "where am I?"

However, the robot didn't seem to even notice her question as it turned away from the bed.

"Please remain in bed. I will inform Doctor Cee-Arr-dash-Eight-Nine-One that you have regained consciousness."

"I… Uh…what?" Kairi tried to get the robot's attention as it moved away from the bed towards a glowing panel on the wall.

Suddenly, Kairi's attention was drawn to a 'swooshing' sound as part of the wall on the other side of the room slid open in what Kairi would later realize was a door, revealing an older man in a white coat.

"Ah, Doctor Cee-Arr-dash-Eight-Nine-One." The robot turned to face the man, "I would like to inform you that the patient has regained consciousness."

"Yes, I can see that M7," the man, doctor, drawled as he rubbed his forehead in clear exasperation, fingers running across a line of receding gray hair, "you're dismissed."

As the robot left the room, the man turned to Kairi, brown eyes lighting up with a much more kindly smile.

"Sorry about that one," the doctor spoke as he walked to Kairi's bed, "his social processors are always going on the fritz."

Kairi remained quiet, having absolutely _no idea_ how to respond to that statement.

"How are you feeling?" the man continued as he stood next to Kairi's bed, looking at what looked like a TV-screen built into the wall, "Kairi, right?" he turned to address Kairi directly.

"Uh… I'm okay, I think," Kairi started, "Wait, how do you who I am?" her head whipped around as she realized what the man said, "…Who are you?"

The man chuckled good-naturedly, "My name is Doctor Patch, or 'CR dash 891' if you're feeling wordy," he added with an exasperated roll of the eyes as he gestured to the door the robot just exited through, "And we noticed the name on your clothes. Don't worry about those by the way, they're still in good condition. You're an incredibly lucky girl, you know that? I can't remember the last time we found a survivor floating in the void. We didn't even need to put you in a bacta tank."

Wait, floating? _Void?_ "W-What are you _talking about?"_ Kairi stammered. None of this was making sense! "_Where am I?_ What _happened to my friends?! _My _island?!"_ Kairi nearly shouted, even as it seemed to drain her strength.

The Doctor, Patch or C-R-whatever, didn't seem surprised at Kairi's outburst. Instead, he suddenly looked… very sad.

"Kairi," Doctor Patch began as he sat down on a stool next to the bed, "what's the last thing you remember?"

"I…" Kairi trailed off, trying to pick apart the _haze_ that suddenly seemed to cloud her thoughts. "There was… There was a storm. And then those… _shadow things_ attacked me…"

She could remember running, stumbling… then a flash of red, a bright smile and a pair of glimmering silver eyes.

"…then _Ruby_ saved me…" even through the haze, Kairi smiled at the memory of Ruby whisking her away from danger.

Then Kairi remembered the storm getting worse… and _Riku…_

"…we found Riku, but then he… he was _gone…_" Kairi felt her breathing quicken again, the _cold pit_ in her stomach she felt when Riku was _swallowed up_ by the darkness.

"And then… then the _big one_ came…" Kairi felt a shiver as she remembered those sickly yellow eyes, and the great black _shadow_ towering over her.

"Ruby managed to kill that one…" even through the haze of fear and uncertainty, Kairi could still remember glimpses of Ruby's battle with the giant monster, the _awe_ she felt while watching Ruby make a _tornado_ that threw the monster off its feet before stabbing it in the heart with her giant scythe.

"But then… _Sora!_" Kairi remembered seeing Sora wander into that same cave where she'd seen the shadow monsters come from!

"I… I told Ruby… and she said she would find them…"

"_Don't worry Kairi, I'll bring them back. I promise."_

"…_Promise you'll come back too?"_

"_I promise."_

Kairi remembered being held tight in Ruby's arms. She remembered feeling, just for a moment, that everything would be okay…

But it wasn't.

_She was on one of the boats, desperately working the oars, fighting against the surf as she tried to make it to shore._

Kairi felt her hands shake. Felt her _whole body_ shake…

_The storm was getting worse. So much worse. The black clouds above were getting thicker and thicker. It looked like they were getting CLOSER. And were… squirming…_

Kairi felt her breathing quicken more and more. Her skin run cold.

_She'd almost made it to shore when she heard the terrible roar, the shadows fell over her, and the darkness descended._

_AGAIN._

Kairi was breathing faster and faster.

"I was on the boat, but they just kept coming. There were so many. So many. So many. So man-"

A hand suddenly came to rest on Kairi's shoulder.

"Kairi, _breath,_" Dr. Patch spoke in a firm, yet gentle voice, "you're _safe_ now. Those things can't hurt you."

Kairi took a breath. Then another.

Then…

"What happened?" Kairi breathed out, barely a whisper.

"Kairi…?" Dr. Patch asked.

"_What. Happened?"_ Kairi's head snapped to the side, looking directly at the doctor. Her eyes wide, her face contorted in fear, anger, disbelief and desperation all at once.

"_What happened to my HOME?!"_

Doctor Patch was momentarily taken aback, clearly not prepared for the _intensity_ of the look Kairi was giving him.

Then his face fell, and he took a breath.

"I'm sorry Kairi," Doctor Patch spoke sadly as he reached over to a bare wall to press a few buttons on a screen, "your home is… gone."

The wall suddenly opened to reveal what seemed to be a window, and Kairi gasped at what it showed.

An expanse of black, filled with many points of light much like the night sky. Long bands of sparkling, multicolored light stretched across the void. A collection of tiny looking metallic shapes floated by.

Kairi had only seen a view like this in comics and movies but… there was no mistaking it.

This was _space._ _She was in outer space!_

But what seized Kairi's attention most of all was the thing floating in the center of the view.

A ball, suspended in the void. One that looked _very familiar_ to Kairi.

She'd seen maps and globes in school. She knew what _her world_ was supposed to look like. The great bright blue oceans, the green and brown lands…

But… but this… _this was all wrong!_

The oceans were no longer blue. Now they were a sickly, _glowing_ purple…

The lands were now _blackened_, and cracked like burnt wood…

And most wrong of all, the entire globe was… _cracked._ It looked _split open_, like a rotten piece of fruit. Whole swaths of land looked _softened_, sinking and collapsing downwards, while other parts were broken out, huge chunks of land and earth torn out and sent flying up where they floated above the planet.A great ugly gash cut across one entire side of the globe, cutting _deep down_ into the planet. So deep that Kairi might have been able to see the very heart of the world laid bare, were it not for the dark purple sludge leaking out.

And thanks to those maps and globes she remembered, Kairi _knew_ that the Destiny Islands, _her home_, was _right in the middle_ of that great wound.

_Was_ right in the middle…

_Was…_

Her home was… _was…_

Kairi placed a shaking hand up against the glass. At some point, she hadn't noticed when, she'd gotten out of bed and staggered over to the window. Kairi wasn't sure what does that might accomplish. Perhaps she was hoping that her hand would just pass right through and break the illusion of this nightmare…

But her hand merely pressed against a hard, cool surface. There was no illusion, no spell to break and no _dream_ to wake up from.

This was real. _So very real…_

"I'm sorry Kairi," Doctor Patch spoke again as he joined Kairi at the window, "by the time we got here, there was nothing we could do."

The doctor's words broke Kairi from her stupor, and brought reality crashing down onto her. Not just the disbelief of seeing her world _torn apart_, but the fear and uncertainty she'd felt when she first woke up.

"Where… _How…?_" Kairi stammered, her whole body shaking as the fear and confusion returned in full force.

"You're on a spaceship, Kairi," Doctor Patch spoke in a clam, gentle tone as he helped Kairi to a nearby bench. "We were in the system when we picked up the attack and came to investigate and look for survivors."

Kairi's face suddenly snapped up upon hearing _survivors_, one last spark of hope in her eyes that maybe, _just maybe…_

"Did you find…?"

But Doctor Patch merely shook his head sadly, "There were a few scattered groups in the farther landmasses. But anywhere near the epicenter…" he trailed off as he looked to the great ugly wound in Kairi's world. The place where everything and _everyone Kairi knew_ used to be…

"You were the only one we found."

And just like that, that last spark of hope was snuffed out.

And the tears began to fall.

Kairi didn't know how long she sat there crying. Minutes? Hours? Dimly, she was aware that Doctor Patch was sitting next to her, occasionally putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. It helped a little.

Eventually Kairi's tears were spent, and all she could do was stare out the window at the ruins of her world.

"Would you like something to eat?" the doctor asked, but Kairi barely heard him. She just kept staring out.

At some point, Kairi noticed that the doctor had left her alone.

At some point, her clothes were left next to her, along with a tray of food. Kairi barely registered getting dressed. The food she ignored entirely.

Kairi didn't know how long she sat there, just staring out the window to the black space, and the torn-apart remnants of her world. It was possible Kairi could look away, or turn off the screen, but the thought never occurred to her. Maybe part of her thought if she looked close enough, she might see something familiar left behind. Maybe if she looked long enough, things might go back to normal. Or perhaps Kairi was just numb.

Though after a while, Kairi did begin to get a little bored. So instead of just staring at the remains of her planet, Kairi found herself counting the other spaceships that were floating around.

Some were very small. So small and so far away they were just specks to Kairi's eyes, though at one point a few flew close enough that she was able to get a better look. One had a long and narrow body, with two great big wings on its sides, along with four smaller wings coming out of the top and bottom of the bigger wings. The rest of the small ships looked _weird_ to Kairi. They were just these _balls_ with a window on the front and two big triangles attached to their sides.

Of the larger space ships Kairi could actually see, she wound up a counting a few different types.

The smallest were six arrow-shaped ships that were usually too far away for Kairi to get a good look at, though once one flew close enough for Kairi to see the big blue light on its back. Thinking back to some of the comics she read with Sora and Riku, Kairi guessed the light might be an engine.

The next biggest were a pair of long and narrow ships that sort of looked like the cargo ships Kairi could remember sailing past her island. They also looked… prickly. Like there were a bunch of little sticks pointing out of them.

After that were two pairs of ships that all looked about the same size, but looked _very_ different. One pair just looked like rectangular boxes with a vaguely curved front and little bubbles on the sides. The other pair looked like some kind of giant axes. Long and narrow with a thin bit at the middle, but a huge blade-shaped piece at their front.

After that were a few different ships that Kairi could only describe as 'giant pizza slices'

First there was one ship that was a big wedge with a big fin pointing out of its back, and two cylinders that Kairi assumed were engines. It also had a smaller fin on top.

Then there was a pair of bigger wedge ships that didn't have a big fin on their backs, but did have smaller fins on their sides, and these huge steps on top that led to a tower with great big square-shaped flat top.

Then there was a fourth ship that looked kinda like the ships with the towers, except it looked like someone had shoved four giant blitzballs into its sides. Kairi thought that one looked kinda funny.

Finally, there was the biggest ship Kairi could see. It looked twice as big as the smallest wedge ship. But this one wasn't a simple wedge shape. Instead it looked more like an arrowhead. Starting with a wedge that turned inward before flaring back out in a pair of wings. This one had a big fin on its back like the smaller wedge ship, and _four_ big cylinder engines. It also had _two_ towers. There was also a symbol painted on each of the ship's wings. Kairi was pretty sure the other ships had it too, but the symbols on this ship were the only ones big enough that Kairi was able to get a good look at them.

It was a white circle with six lines pointing away from it like spokes on a wheel. Surrounding the circle was a mass of blue, as well as other curved white lines that formed an incomplete circle. At the outermost edge was a black circle ringed with spikes that pierced into the blue. It sort of looked like the blue was preventing the black from reaching the white…

Of course, that only served to remind Kairi of the darkness that swept over her world and reduced it to… _that._

And just like that, Kairi was back to staring at the ruins of her home.

Some time later, she couldn't tell how long, Kairi was dimly aware of the door opening, and heard Dr. Patch's voice again. Talking to someone he called 'Admiral'…

Kairi was only barely aware of footsteps approaching, and of someone sitting down on the bench next to her.

"It's hard to look away, isn't it?" came a strange voice that sounded cold, detached, yet oddly soothing at the same time.

The voice caught Kairi's attention enough to finally tear her eyes away from the scene, looking to see the person now sitting on the bench with her.

Normally, Kairi might be pretty confused to see a man with blue skin and red eyes, but after everything that happened to her recently, the most Kairi could manage was a raised eyebrow at what she was looking at.

The man's skin was a light sky-blue that contrasted with his _very_ dark, red eyes. His short, close-cropped hair at first looked to be black, through Kairi quickly realized it was simply a much darker shade of blue. He was wearing a pure-white suit that bore a pair of blue triangular sigils on its high collar, broad gold strips on top of the shoulders, and a large rectangular broach on the left side of the chest that bore a number of square pins, colored blue, yellow and red.

On the upper sleeve below the shoulder was the same emblem Kairi saw on the spaceships outside.

"You think if you just look hard enough, you'll see _something_ that's the same. Anything familiar that might still be there…" the man continued, putting words to what Kairi had been feeling looking out that window with uncanny accuracy. After a moment, Kairi realized what this must mean…

"You've seen this before?" Kairi asked. If this man could tell what she was thinking so easily…

"Yes, Ms. Kairi," the man replied, "too many times, I'm afraid," he answered with an even tone that still conveyed regret.

But in that moment, Kairi was more focused on the fact that this was _someone else_ whom she'd never met but still _somehow_ knew her name. This time, she had her question ready.

"Who are you?" Kairi asked, her eyes now focused on the man sitting next to her.

The man glanced to Kairi with what almost seemed to be a look of approval at her curiosity.

"Well if you're curious, my name is-," the man spoke a word that was _utterly_ incomprehensible to Kairi.

"Uh…" Kairi let out a confused breath. Was it rude to tell someone that you had _absolutely no idea_ how their name was supposed to work?

But the man simply gave a brief, amused chuckle.

"Don't worry about it. There aren't many left who can properly hear it, let alone speak it," The man turned to address Kairi fully before continuing.

"Call me Thrawn."

Kairi found herself nodding in understanding. Well, at least that was a pretty easy name to remember.

"I am the Admiral commanding this battle group," the man, Thrawn, continued his introduction, gesturing to the various ships outside the window. He then motioned behind the bench they were sitting on. Following his motion, Kairi realized there was another person standing behind them.

"This is Karyn Faro," standing behind the two was a woman with fair skin and dark brown hair and eyes. She wore a uniform similar to Thrawn's, though hers was a dark green and had a cap. "She is the Captain of this ship, the _Chimera_."

The woman gave Kairi a friendly smile and nod.

Behind her, Kairi noticed a few other people. Standing at the back of the room was Dr. Patch, as well as three others on either side of the door. The three newcomers were dressed head to toe in white armor with an oddly shaped helmet with a T-shaped visor on the front. Two of them had large red stripes running down their arms, while the third had blue markings across his arms, chest and legs, as well as a blue V-shaped symbol on the front of his helmet.

"I imagine you have more questions…" Kairi heard Mr., or perhaps 'Admiral', Thrawn's calm, even voice speak up again. Looking back, Kairi saw the man giving her what seemed to be an expectant look.

Right… questions. Kairi was pretty sure she had a million and one of those.

But in that moment, there was one question above all others Kairi felt she… _needed_ to ask. A question part of her _didn't_ want to know the answer to, ever since she'd seen the blasted remnants of her home.

"What… _happened?_ What happened to my world?"

Thrawn nodded.

"Your world was attacked by an extremely dangerous and powerful alien entity. We call them the Heartless. They are creatures of pure darkness that seek to devour all things that live."

_Heartless…_ Something about that word felt familiar to Kairi. Like something she'd heard long ago in some half-remembered dream…

"We, that is myself and everyone here," Thrawn continued, gesturing to the room and the other craft outside, "are part of the Imperial Protectorate. We have been fighting the Heartless for close to ten years now, trying to prevent their spread."

"As I believe Dr. Patch informed you, we were passing through this system when we detected the Heartless attack on your world. We came to assist, but by the time we arrived here, the most we could do was look for survivors. We were able to locate a few scattered groups on the opposite side of the planet, but unfortunately you were the only one we found near that island."

Hearing all this a second time, Kairi realized she'd missed the bit about _other survivors_ before. But… if they weren't from the islands…

"Did… any of the other people you found…?" Kairi trailed off. She had little hope at this point.

The Admiral merely shook his head.

"We passed your name and face around the survivors we found. I'm sorry to say, no one recognized you."

…Of course they didn't. How could they? Everything and _everyone_ Kairi knew was on the Destiny Islands. The islands that were now…

Kairi felt her head fall forward in utter defeat.

_Gone._ They were all _gone._

Everything… and everyone…

"Ms. Kairi," Kairi heard the Admiral speak up again, "if you don't mind, we also have a few questions for you. Do you think you could answer them?"

"…Okay," Kairi spoke slowly. Why not? What better did she have to do now?

"During the attack, do you remember a very bright flash of light?"

"A… flash?" Kairi glanced up in confusion.

Thrawn motioned towards the woman, Ms. Faro, who pulled a strange looking device from her coat.

Kairi looked at the device curiously, only to be amazed when it suddenly lit up, projecting a three-dimensional image of an entire world. _Her world_, back when it was still _normal!_

Except… it wasn't. As the projected globe turned, Kairi saw a great splotch of black covering almost the entire ocean where her island resided. It looked like a storm…

Kairi's eyes widened in realization. _The_ storm…

"Is that the…?" Kairi trailed off as she looked to Thrawn.

"Yes," the man nodded, "that is the Heartless that attacked your world."

Kairi found herself staring at the great black thing. It reminded her of a hurricane, but far bigger than any hurricane that ever existed. A storm that looked like it was trying to swallow up the whole world.

Because, Kairi remembered, that's _exactly what it was doing._

But then, close to the center of the black cyclone, right near where her island was, a single point of light suddenly appeared. Kairi peered closer, wondering what it was…

Then that point of light _exploded_, expanding outwards in a flash that became a great dome of light ripping through the darkness around it. The flash still looked relatively small compared to the rest of the storm, but Kairi knew that flash had to be covering _dozens_ of kilometers. Even as the flash began to subside it wasn't yet finished, sending ripples even further out into the storm.

When the light finally subsided, there was a great hole in the center of the black storm where no darkness lay, with other bits of the storm breaking up along the edge.

While the storm continued to rage, it now seemed… _diminished_ just a bit. Like it wasn't quite as unstoppable as it once seemed…

"What was _that?"_ Kairi looked to Thrawn in amazement.

The Admiral raised a curious eyebrow.

"We were actually hoping _you_ might be able to tell us that," Thrawn pointed to the massive hole that was now in the center of the storm.

"That flash vaporized every heartless in a forty-nine kilometer radius. When we investigated, we found you not far from the epicenter. That flash very likely saved your life."

Kairi continued to stare at that void in the middle of the storm. That flash of light might not have _killed_ this unimaginably huge monster… but it did _hurt it._

"We've never seen anything quite like this before," Thrawn continued, "is there anything about this that seems familiar? Anything at all?"

Kairi just shook her head.

"No… I've never seen anything like that…" the closest thing Kairi could remember was… a glint and a shimmer in Ruby's eyes that night. But that was ridiculous. Ruby couldn't do _THAT… _

Could she?

Thrawn simply nodded.

"In that case, would you mind telling us about the Keyblade?"

"…Key-what?" Kairi turned to the man with a _very_ confused expression.

Thrawn himself also looked mildly confused at Kairi's confusion.

"The weapon you were holding when we found you?"

Kairi cocked her head to the side in confusion. She _definitely_ didn't remember holding any kind of weapon…

Ms. Faro touched a few buttons on the strange device, and the projected image of Kairi's planet was replaced with a new image. This one looked more like a movie screen.

It showed the image of several people standing in a narrow metal room. They were all wearing the same kind of armor as the three who walked into the room a little while ago. Most were carrying weapons, guns and rifles of some kind.

All of a sudden one of the walls slid back, revealing some kind of dark, purple sky beyond. The people in armor all gathered around the opening. Two of them leaned far out the opening as others held them steady. It looked like they were trying to grab something…

Then the armored people pulled a something back into the room, and Kairi gasped.

It was _her._

Kairi stared as her unconscious body was carefully pulled into what must have been some kind of aircraft. Though, after the initial shock of seeing herself on the screen passed, Kairi's attention was immediately drawn to _something_ the her-on-the-screen was holding in her right hand…

What could only be described as a _giant Key_.

The thing was huge, the size of a large sword. Much bigger than the wooden swords Sora and Riku played with. It had a long, cylinder-shaped 'blade' that was colored a bight gold, and some kind of five-sided handguard going around the handle that was colored a similarly bright silver. Somehow, even while unconscious, it was clear that Kairi was holding _tight_ onto this object.

Though as Kairi's body was laid onto a small stretcher along the side of the aircraft's cabin, it seemed her grip on the large key finally loosened. One of the people in armor grabbed the key as it slipped from Kairi's grasp.

However, they weren't holding it for long. Mere moments later, the giant key suddenly gave off a flash of light…

And then it was gone.

Even with their faces covered, the looks of befuddlement among the people in armor was quite clear.

With that, Ms. Faro rewound the video a bit, freezing it on a close-up image of that strange, over-sized key.

The confusion on Kairi's face must have been clear as day, as Thrawn didn't continue his original line of questioning.

"…Do you remember anything about that artifact? Or how you acquired it?"

Kairi could only shake her head as she stared at the image.

Glancing down, Kairi stared at her now-open right hand. The hand that had held that… _Keyblade…_

Unbidden, a distant, long-forgotten memory flashed along the edges of Kairi's awareness. A memory of… _before._ Before the Destiny Islands…

_She can remember her tiny hands gripping at a giant blue/grey key… a blue-haired woman with a kind smile… monsters with purple skin and red eyes… a long white cloak fluttering in the wind…_

"I… I can't remember…" Kairi breathed out.

_The light will always be with you…_

"There was a voice… it said something about… _light…_" Kairi could dimly remember chasing a spark through the darkness…

"Then I woke up here." Kairi finished, glancing up to Thrawn.

The Admiral stroked his chin in clear contemplation. Then he nodded.

"I suppose that will have to do for now," he spoke before standing to his feet. Ms. Faro closed the strange projection thingy and returned it to her coat.

"Um, Sir…?" Kairi started to ask, "Er, Admiral? Uh… Thrawn?" Kairi completely tripped over her own words. She'd heard like, three different ways this guy was addressed and wasn't sure which one to use!

"Yes…?" Thankfully the man didn't seem at all angry at Kairi's fumbling, instead merely giving Kairi an expectant glance, simply waiting for whatever question she had. Out of the corner of her eye, Kairi was pretty sure Ms. Faro, actually _Captain_ Faro now that Kairi remembered, was giving her an amused smile.

"What… _is_ a Keyblade?" Kairi asked, finally gathering her wits.

"It is a weapon of incredible power," the Admiral answered, "Supposedly, they were wielded by warriors of light long ago to battle a great darkness."

"…Like the Heartless…" Kairi spoke up as a realization began to dawn on her…

"Like the Heartless," Thrawn nodded.

Kairi found herself raising her right hand up, staring into the hand that she'd seen holding this weapon.

"And now _I_ have one of these… Keyblades?"

"So it would seem," the Admiral answered.

Kairi continued to stare at her hand, thoughts and memories swirling through her head. Of that _image_ of that key in her hand, the flashes of _something_ before she'd woken up, and distant memories long buried in the back of her head…

There were so many _new_ things now… Kairi didn't know what to think… So she asked the only thing she could.

"What's going to happen… now?" Kairi asked as she _tried_ to stand up, only to be struck with a sudden bout of dizziness, as well as a feeling she couldn't quite place. A strong grip came to rest on her shoulder, steadying Kairi before she fell.

"Well, right _now_ it seems you could use a decent meal," Thrawn answered with a mildly amused tone, glancing past Kairi to something on bench next to her. Following his look, Kairi noticed the tray of untouched food.

Hungry. _That_ was what she was feeling. In fact, Kairi realized she was feeling _really _hungry right now.

"Yeah… food sounds good right now… Is there a place I could…?" Kairi managed to say as she was able to finally steady herself. When was the last time she had anything to eat?

The Admiral gave a small reassuring smile.

"Don't worry Ms. Kairi, we'll be sure to take good care of you. I believe Captain Faro can help get you some food," Thrawn glanced to the woman in green.

"Sir," Captain Faro nodded to the Admiral before turning to Kairi with a kind smile, "Ms. Kairi, if you'll come with me I can show you to mess hall. I'm sure we can find you something _much_ better than med food. After that, we can get you set up in some proper quarters."

"Sure, sounds good," Kairi nodded. She wasn't actually sure what 'mess hall' or 'quarters' were, but right now she was just a bit too hungry to care.

Though as she left the room with Captain Faro, Kairi glanced back at the shattered remains of her world beyond the window one last time.

But as she turned away and the door closed behind her, Kairi found herself focusing more and more on that word now echoing through her head…

_Keyblade…_

* * *

PRIORITY COM TRAFFIC – ADMIRALTY COUNCIL CHANNEL

Level Zero Security Clearance: Admiral's Eyes Only

FROM-[Thrawn, Admiral – Frist Fleet]

TO-[ALL ACTIVE AC MEMBERS]

_Key has been located and secured, along with a wielder. Homeworld unfortunately lost to Heartless attack. Unknown if attack was random or if the Heartless were drawn to Key. Key Wielder is in stable physical and psychological condition, though she does not display any knowledge on what the Key is, how she acquired it or how to use it._

_Additionally, the Key Wielder has tested positive as a potential Light-Bringer. Large-scale positive-mana-reaction was detected on planet's surface during Heartless attack. Currently unknown if the Key Wielder caused this reaction. Nevertheless, she will be kept under high security for the foreseeable future. _

_All relevant data is being forwarded. _

[END MESSAGE]

* * *

AN: I gotta say, I've been waiting to do this reveal almost as long as the Ruby/Weiss reunion. So yeah, _Star Wars_ is a thing in this story now.

To give some proper context as to how I'm fitting Star Wars into the KH-verse, I should state first that this is not some straight, 1-to-1 translation where the Kingdom Hearts worlds just _exist_ in the Star Wars galaxy, or that there is some Star Wars 'world' within the KH-verse. Instead, the way Star Wars elements and characters are being brought in KH here is more akin to how KH handles Final Fantasy characters and elements;

While Squall Leonhart, Selphie Tilmitt and Seifer Almasy all show up in Kingdom Hearts, they are clearly NOT the versions of those characters seen in Final Fantasy 8. Sure, they have similarities but also just as many (if not more) differences. And the same goes for characters like Tidus, Wakka, Yuffie, Aerith, Cloud and all the rest. These are clearly not the exact same characters from FF7, FF8 or FF10. They are all the 'Kingdom Hearts version' of these characters.

This is the mentality I'm using to approach bringing Star Wars into Kingdom Hearts. Not trying to bring the entire damn _galaxy_ in wholesale, but rather cherry-picking elements that best fit into this series. Or just something really fun like having Monstro the Space Whale fight a Star Destroyer.

In other news; Yes, that nuclear-scale light flash was Ruby. Silver Eyes and Keyblades can make for a SCARY combo.

And speaking of Keyblades; Yep, Kairi got the Kingdom Key D. Needless to say, I have _plans_ for that little bit.

And finally, because I am a huge nerd when it comes to spaceships, here is a full breakdown of Thrawn's battlegroup:

6 Raider-class corvettes

2 Lancer-class frigates

2 Dreadnaught-class Heavy Cruisers (because what is Thrawn without a few Dreadnaughts?)

2 Nebulon-B cruisers

1 Acclimator-class Assault Carrier

2 Victory-class Star Destroyers

1 Immobilizer 314 Interdictor

1 Venator-class Star Destroyer

1 Imperial-II class Star Destroyer


End file.
